Posted on 03/29/2006 11:30:40 AM PST by presidio9
The usual suspects are crying out about a study suggesting whiny babies become conservative adults. Plus, bloggers herald news of 8.5 million Chinese moving into cities. And, are comic book publishers keeping a super hero from the public?
Oh Baby!
It's been a busy couple of weeks for social scientists. This week, psychologist Jack Block's controversial study is heating up the blogosphere, making it one of the most-cited news stories of the week.
Block's study began in the 1960's when he began tracking over 100 nursery school kids in Berkely, California as part of a study of personality. Teachers and assistants who had known the kids for months rated the children's personalities.
A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, and this time, also looked at politics. What did he find? The "whiny kids" tended to grow up conservative, becoming rigid young adults who also adhered closely to traditional gender roles. The confident kids, however, turned out to be politically liberal, transforming into bright, non-conforming adults.
Block's findings did not surprise many conservative bloggers who hardly think Berkeley babies are a random sample. Michelle Malkin quotes an anonymous tipster who raises the point that "ALL of the children in that study were the offspring of U.C. Berkeley professors, lecturers, and staff members. The reason the Child Study Center is so popular is that they offer free/cheap child care/nursery schooling in exchange for the parents allowing their kids to be 'studied' by psychologists all day every day."
Tiny’s Republican seconds that. "My first reaction is great, as long as they grow up conservative I don't care what they are like as kids," he writes. "Then I read the story...oh big surprise that this 'study'…was done by Berkeley profs and according to the article 95% of the 100-ish kids tracked grew up in Berkeley. I love how they describe those who became conservative as 'rigid!' Of course personality traits of the non-conservatives sound nice!"
And Coalition of the Swilling couldn't agree more. "Whenever I read stuff like this I'm reminded more and more of the old Soviet Science Academies and the 'facts' they would churn out. But maybe I should just quit whining..."
Others are instantly suspicious of any Berkeley study, never mind one about professors' babies. Speakspook writes, "Anything UC Berkeley comes up with is immediately suspect. If however, the study is valid, it would be an indication that whiny children grow up to be well adjusted adults with a positive outlook on life, while confident kids grow up to be unprincipled, amoral, ranting liberals."
Mike Stockinger on Uncorrelated writes, "The reality is that the Berkeley study has no bearing on people's political affiliations. Some Democrats are, in terms of the study, 'conservatives,' and many Republicans are 'liberal.' I do know a few whiny 'conservatives,' but most of the whining I hear always seems to come from self-identified 'liberals' er-r-r, I mean 'progressives'."
Liberal bloggers are not surprised by the findings either, albeit for different reasons. Liberal blogger John Aravosis at AMERICAblog writes, "What do Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Limbaugh, George Will, Dr. Laura, the Republican bloggers all have in common? Whiny insecure brats. What do Republicans stand for anyway? They're bullies who need the government to either blow up or regulate everyone and everything they're afraid of, which is pretty much everything. Sound familiar? Whereas liberals are the well-adjusted kid, the nice guy, live and let live..."
BLOCK, JACK EL CERRITO,CA 94530 NOT EMPLOYED/RETIRED 9/30/2003 $2,000 Dean, Howard
BLOCK, JACK EL CERRITO,CA 94530 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELE 6/30/2003 $2,000 Kucinich, Dennis J
BLOCK, JACK EL CERRITO,CA 94530 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY/R 11/17/2004 $1,000 Council for a Livable World
BLOCK, JACK EL CERRITO,CA 94530 N/A/RETIRED 3/2/2004 $500 America Coming Together
BLOCK, JACK EL CERRITO,CA 94530 N/A/RETIRED 4/7/2004 $500 America Coming Together
BLOCK, JACK EL CERRITO,CA 94530 NOT EMPLOYED/RETIRED 4/23/2004 $500 Democracy for America
BLOCK, JACK EL CERRITO,CA 94530 PROFESSOR 3/1/2004 $500 Obama, Barack
BLOCK, JACK EL CERRITO,CA 94530 RETIRED/PROFESSOR 5/15/2004 $500 Moveon.org
BLOCK, JACK EL CERRITO,CA 94530 UNIV/PROF 1/28/2005 $250 Progressive Vote
And that's just the first ten of sixty-seven records for the Good Doctor.
ping
I'm sure 100 kids in Berkely is such a representative sample of America.
Whoever that is, that is a cool name. For a moment, I thought it said "Speakspoke". No first name listed in the article.
Say what?
Last I checked, liberas are the ones who want to regulate everyone and everything. Talk about projection.
"If however, the study is valid, it would be an indication that whiny children grow up to be well adjusted adults with a positive outlook on life, while confident kids grow up to be unprincipled, amoral, ranting liberals."
Well, obviously the study is nowhere near valid, but I do like this guy's take.
One must remember that in Berzerkly, anyone ever so slightly to right of Lenin is a "Conservative."
Man, once the MSM was really outted for the radically left-bent entities they really were, they didn't waste any time casting aside any pretext of being facts neutral. They are now openly and unabashedly Conservative trashers. Probably figure the only loyal audience available to them is the screaming libs, so might as well just jump in with both feet now.
The thing is ... suppose the "whiny" kids did grow up to be "conservative" (whatever that means to Mr. Block).
The interesting question would be: why? Perhaps it's nothing more than little kids having a firmer sense of right and wrong.
It just wasn't my experience that the whiny cry babies grew up to be the football players, the Airborne Rangers, the Greeen Berets, the Paratroops, the hunters, all these are overwhelmingly populated by conservatives.
Berkeley has been nuts for years. They're supposed to be taken seriously? HAHAHAHAHA
It's Berkeley. How seriously would you take a study on Roman Catholicism from Bob Jones U?
So why aren't there more conservatives? It seems to me that MOST babies are whiny.
Excerpt:
"That’s ironic when you consider reality. After all, it’s liberals who have developed an unhealthful addiction to the state. They demand that government make all sorts of decisions - from retirement plans to the size of their toilets - for responsible adults. Who see conspiracies everywhere but in abortion clinics. Who still fixate on the 2000 presidential election and just can’t, if you’ll pardon the expression, move on.
Who are so emotionally fragile that Kerry’s loss sent them scurrying to mental health professionals in an effort to assuage their trauma and depression. At least one man was so distressed over the 2004 election that he blew his brains out with a shotgun. No doubt some study would have identified him as one of those active, vital, cheerful folks open to new experiences."
We learned from an earlier thread that the subjects were the children of "progressive" Berkley professors who were given free child care for the right to use their children as lab rats.
As posed in that earlier thread, all the kids who grew up conservative were probably already rebelling against their wacky parents, which is why they were pissed off.
Kids who spend most of their first five years with their parents may appear whiney and maladjusted to the leftist educrats.
We decided to try our local gubmint school for 1/2 day kindergarten when he was 5 yrs. When my wife took our son in to register they rather firmly said to my kid "O.K. you come with me" they wanted to bring him to an evaluation room. My wife started to come with them and the edumonster said "I didn't ask you to come." Nathan started to cry. The edunazi made some comment like "now how old is he" implying of course that this behaviour was not what their little leftist socialization model expected to see. My wife was so steamed. She had wanted to say. "This is what a securely attached kid does an adult tries to take them away from their parent you moron." But of course she just smiled and said, "I think we'll just call this off."
First, they know we are a conservative family so they start out not liking us, they project a certain set of condescending expectations on the interaction, then they interpret all results based on their leftist technocratic professionalized expectations grid. I'm sure she made some file notes that would have supported this idiots research conclusions and it would tell us more about them than us.
The "study" is from a chronic ultra-lefist partisan faker who has created tons of this nonsense. Michelle Malkin utterly exposed him. The "experiment" was in a day care center, exclusively populated with fellow U. of Berkeley faculty members' children. Not one in thirty of these parents is Republican. This is NOT representative of American families.
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