...liberals appear to have a higher tolerance for change than conservatives do.
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Yeah, like sheep. |
Posted on 03/23/2005 9:13:20 AM PST by Clint N. Suhks
Politically conservative agendas may range from supporting the Vietnam War to upholding traditional moral and religious values to opposing welfare. But are there consistent underlying motivations?
Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:
Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management "From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.
Assistant Professor Jack Glaser of the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and Visiting Professor Frank Sulloway of UC Berkeley joined lead author, Associate Professor John Jost of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and Professor Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland at College Park, to analyze the literature on conservatism.
The psychologists sought patterns among 88 samples, involving 22,818 participants, taken from journal articles, books and conference papers. The material originating from 12 countries included speeches and interviews given by politicians, opinions and verdicts rendered by judges, as well as experimental, field and survey studies.
Ten meta-analytic calculations performed on the material - which included various types of literature and approaches from different countries and groups - yielded consistent, common threads, Glaser said.
The avoidance of uncertainty, for example, as well as the striving for certainty, are particularly tied to one key dimension of conservative thought - the resistance to change or hanging onto the status quo, they said.
The terror management feature of conservatism can be seen in post-Sept. 11 America, where many people appear to shun and even punish outsiders and those who threaten the status of cherished world views, they wrote.
Concerns with fear and threat, likewise, can be linked to a second key dimension of conservatism - an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the Indian caste system, South African apartheid and the conservative, segregationist politics of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South S.C.).
Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way, the authors commented in a published reply to the article.
This research marks the first synthesis of a vast amount of information about conservatism, and the result is an "elegant and unifying explanation" for political conservatism under the rubric of motivated social cognition, said Sulloway. That entails the tendency of people's attitudinal preferences on policy matters to be explained by individual needs based on personality, social interests or existential needs.
The researchers' analytical methods allowed them to determine the effects for each class of factors and revealed "more pluralistic and nuanced understanding of the source of conservatism," Sulloway said.
While most people resist change, Glaser said, liberals appear to have a higher tolerance for change than conservatives do.
As for conservatives' penchant for accepting inequality, he said, one contemporary example is liberals' general endorsement of extending rights and liberties to disadvantaged minorities such as gays and lesbians, compared to conservatives' opposing position.
The researchers said that conservative ideologies, like virtually all belief systems, develop in part because they satisfy some psychological needs, but that "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false, irrational, or unprincipled."
They also stressed that their findings are not judgmental.
"In many cases, including mass politics, 'liberal' traits may be liabilities, and being intolerant of ambiguity, high on the need for closure, or low in cognitive complexity might be associated with such generally valued characteristics as personal commitment and unwavering loyalty," the researchers wrote.
This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes, the researchers advised.
The latest debate about the possibility that the Bush administration ignored intelligence information that discounted reports of Iraq buying nuclear material from Africa may be linked to the conservative intolerance for ambiguity and or need for closure, said Glaser.
"For a variety of psychological reasons, then, right-wing populism may have more consistent appeal than left-wing populism, especially in times of potential crisis and instability," he said.
Glaser acknowledged that the team's exclusive assessment of the psychological motivations of political conservatism might be viewed as a partisan exercise. However, he said, there is a host of information available about conservatism, but not about liberalism.
The researchers conceded cases of left-wing ideologues, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro, who, once in power, steadfastly resisted change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism.
Yet, they noted that some of these figures might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended. The researchers noted that Stalin, for example, was concerned about defending and preserving the existing Soviet system.
Although they concluded that conservatives are less "integratively complex" than others are, Glaser said, "it doesn't mean that they're simple-minded."
Conservatives don't feel the need to jump through complex, intellectual hoops in order to understand or justify some of their positions, he said. "They are more comfortable seeing and stating things in black and white in ways that would make liberals squirm," Glaser said.
He pointed as an example to a 2001 trip to Italy, where President George W. Bush was asked to explain himself. The Republican president told assembled world leaders, "I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right." And in 2002, Bush told a British reporter, "Look, my job isn't to nuance."
In the case of men: testicles
And in the case of women: liking them.
Ah, an oldie, but goodie.
LOL!
I can't believe this " " research " " is to intended to be taken seriously.
They forgot common sense.
The road to hell was paved by Berkeley professors.
intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
I'm a little uncertain here, maybe the wording is ambiguous, but aren't these the same thing, said three different ways?
But, my favorite bit is where the writer classified Stalin as a Conservative. That takes cajones.
"A Conservative is someone who holds on to the best of the past while being open to the best of the future"
From my push card when I ran for State Rep.
...liberals appear to have a higher tolerance for change than conservatives do.
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Yeah, like sheep. |
I believe I've seen this article before, under the title "When Stupid People Learn Big Words and Start Bloviating on Issues They have No Comprehension of."
Even more remarkable is that they believe their philosophy gives them a coherent model for understanding reality.
I, on the other hand, believe that all their pseudo-intellectual drivel reduces to a simple, well-worn concept: Ignorance is Strength.
(steely)
So how much did the Federal government/we pay for this "research"?
I continue to be amazed at the utter ignorance of these left-wing "researchers"? Hitler and Mussolini (the leaders of their respective country's national SOCIALIST movements) were right-wing conservatives?
Words fail me...
The proper response every time the communist left tries this trick is to demand from them that they acknowledge that equality by forced outcomes is only and necessarily obtainable by unequal treatment of individuals. Do not yield on this point. Every person has equal rights under the law, what they chose to do with those rights will determine their life's path, its up to them, nobody else. I refuse to let them pervert the definition of liberty and equality!
The laws of science, like history, continue to be rewritten by politically correct thinking. Karl Marx argued that 2+2 only equals 4 when good solid Marxist logic is applied-there's IS no reality outside of politics. This is a line of thinking that leads to ideas such as equality means the slaughter of innocents and the Final Solution. Along with morality, ethics, religion and compassion, the left now labors to discredit science. Ignorance is Strength.
> I can't believe this "research" is to intended to be taken seriously.
That's the point at which I stopped reading the article. To say that conservatives fit into some kind of psychological profile is nonsense.
1.2 million
"We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true." -- the "Bandar-log" monkeys in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.
A bunch of Berkeley professors have made attempts (documented here) to link some of America's most effective advocates of limited government, communication and persuasion with some of history's worst advocates of huge all-powerful government, coercion and brutality. What this demonstrates is that the lunatic left remains just as psychotic and hostile -- and dangerous -- as were the Rosenbergs and other home-grown spies of the 1940s (whose bizarre delusions let them think that they were saving the world from an evil American "Naziism" by giving our nuclear secrets to those virtuous, benevolent Soviet Russians). While pretending to be just as critical of liberals and socialists, these pathetic "intellectuals" demonstrate how ridiculous they are by confusing psychopathic control freaks such as Hitler and Mussolini with warm-hearted, easy-going live-and-let-livers such as Ronald Reagan. Only hate-filled psychotics as intensely uptight and humorless as Hitler and Mussolini themselves could be so psychologically incapable of telling the difference. As Bret Stevens has said in another context, "This style of hyperbole is a symptom of madness, because it displays such palpable disconnect from observable reality." But it doesn't stop there; they even try to to "prove" (?) their absurd assertions of the alleged similarity by trying to build a case that they all belong in what they postulate as a "right-wing conservative" category "because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form."* How vague, how feeble, how pitiful can you get? More importantly, they're showing how desperately they want public policy discussions to leave no room whatsoever for pro-liberty limited-government advocacy -- since they need so badly for the choices to be strictly limited to variations of authoritarianism ('ours' or 'theirs' -- socialism or fascism), the only way the socialism they advocate can be presented in what they apparently believe to be a relatively favorable light. Their strained attempts to find traits which European dictators and American conservatives have in common are as laughable as those found in "Paint Their Swastika Green" by Brien Bartels (posted here). However, the alleged "intolerance for ambiguity and or need for closure", for example, while presented as a conservative trait, should more appropriately be applied to "liberals" and other socialists whose pathological fear of liberty and free markets in general rests on a fundamental terror of the spontaneous order where (horrors!) "no one is in charge." The Psychological Association, in giving them any credence at all, is saying in effect, "Beware! Our profession is chock full of nuts!" ------ And see http://FreedomKeys.com/collectivism.htm HERE -- which demonstrates how all the different control freaks belong in the control freak category and that your political choices and standards of ethics are not limited to varieties of control freaks and their rationales Find "There is something profoundly immoral for a latte-sipping, upscale Westerner of the postmodern age flippantly evoking Hitler when we think of the countless souls lost to the historical record who were systematically starved and gassed in the factories of death of the Third Reich." at http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson031805.html HERE -- where the Hitlerian slur is deconstructed. Also see http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/whoismoredangerous.shtml HERE -- "Who Is the More Dangerous Enemy? The Terrorists -- Or Our College Professors?" |
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| "Market bashers ... might understand the claim that in some particular field, markets required no intervention--though they'd be skeptical--but the notion that, on general principle, complex systems ran themselves just fine without benign intervention seemed like it could only be the product of a quasi-religious faith. ... Of course, this gets things almost precisely backwards. It is the idea that all order must be explained by a functioning mind at the helm, not its denial, that has the closet affinity to the religious instinct." -- Julian Sanchez "Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth." -- Julian Simon "Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny cannot yield prosperity. ... Socialism collapsed because it is a policy of unrestrained intervention. It tries to fix what is 'wrong' with the spontaneous, self-organizing phenomenon called capitalism. But, of course, a natural process cannot be 'fixed.' ... Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon." -- Michael Rothschild in BIONOMICS: Economy as Ecosystem "Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state. That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals." -- Lew Rockwell "If concern for human poverty and suffering were one's primary motive, one would seek to discover their cause. One would not fail to ask : Why did some nations develop, while others did not? Why have some nations achieved material abundance, while others have remained stagnant in sub-human misery? History and specifically the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the 19th century would give an immediate answer : capitalism is the only system that enables men to produce abundance - and the key to capitalism is individual freedom." -- Ayn Rand, "Requiem for Man", Chapter 24 of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal * "From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time." -- F. A. Hayek "Machan shines as he exposes embarrassing contradictions of egalitarianism. Example: 'If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet, striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality.'" -- from Jim Powell's Review of Private Rights and PublicIllusions by Tibor Machan. "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." -- Milton Friedman "Control freaks who sneer at people who have 'faith' in the free market must be fantasizing an allegedly 'higher' political end than freedom." -- Rick Gaber "Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end." --Prof. John E. E. D. Acton "There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men." -- Prof. John E. E. D. Acton "So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create 'social justice' is giving them enough power to destroy all justice, all freedom, and all human dignity." -- Thomas Sowell "People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell "Most modern intellectuals congratulate themselves for having achieved the allegedly momentus insight that capitalism and altruism are ultimately incompatible. Yet they're still too damned ignorant to realize, or too damned stubborn to acknowledge, that altruism is definitely NOT the only moral code available to mankind; it is, in fact, the bloodiest and most regressive one of all. Such stunted thinking on the part of the intelligentsia has resulted in their committing the intellectual atrocity of rejecting the capitalism and freedom instead of the altruism and coercion." -- Rick Gaber "The primary motive of modern intellectuals who advocate various forms of dictatorship is not concern for human poverty and suffering; it is the preservation of the ancient moral code of altruism, with emphasis on demanded sacrifices and on securing for themselves positions to prescribe the sacrifices, if not personally doing the demanding." -- Rick Gaber "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule" -- H. L. Mencken "The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced." -- Ayn Rand "There are some modern intellectuals, especially among those coddled at Berkeley, who do not in the least apologize for the thousands, even millions, of murders perpetrated by Stalin, Mao or Castro. Indeed, they defend them as 'necessary' to this day. Don't think for a moment that they no longer work to destroy free lives, free minds and free markets." -- Rick Gaber "The most ridiculous, most despicable of all con artists are those pompous, condescending, so-called 'intellectuals' who purport to use the intellect to 'prove' the worthlessness of human intelligence -- and thereby, of the intellect. They don't even seem to realize all they're doing is admitting their own self-negation in the most pathetic way possible, in public, to all but the most gullible." -- Rick Gaber "Left-wing historians' sympathy for American communism is an example of ideological bias and self-deception comparable to Holocaust denial, according to [Haynes and Klehr, in their new book, In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage ]." -- Publishers Weekly
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"meta-analytic calculations"? Yeah, right...
"Concerns with fear and threat, likewise, can be linked to a second key dimension of conservatism - an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the Indian caste system, South African apartheid"......Robert Byrd, Al Gore's dad, Boston busing protests....
> From my push card when I ran for State Rep.
Tilting at windmills?
:-)
Seriously, thanks for running.
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