Posted on 09/14/2007 1:29:14 PM PDT by neverdem
Are liberals smarter than conservatives?
It looks that way, according to a study published this week in Nature Neuroscience. In a rapid response test—you press a button if you're given one signal, but not if you're given a different signal—the authors found that conservatives were "more likely to make errors of commission," whereas "stronger liberalism was correlated with greater accuracy." They concluded that "a more conservative orientation is related to greater persistence in a habitual response pattern, despite signals that this response pattern should change."
Does this mean liberal brains are fitter? Apparently. "Liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty," the authors wrote. New York University, which helped fund the study, concluded, "Liberals are more likely than are conservatives to respond to cues signaling the need to change habitual responses." The study's lead author, NYU professor David Amodio, told London's Daily Telegraph that "liberals tended to be more sensitive and responsive to information that might conflict with their habitual way of thinking."
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Doesn't mean the response they altered to was the correct response, it just indicates they changed.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sure you can, I do it all the time without even thinking about it.
Thanks for the link!
ping for later
My study concludes that liberals are more adept at mental masterbation, and every three months there is additional evidence to confirm my conclusion.
Who da thunk?
Thanks for the feedback.
The same with TV reporters. I don’t think many intelligent people would stand outside hanging onto trees or signs in 100+ MPH wind reporting on hurricanes.
As explained...
Political attitudes questionnaire. A measure of political attitudes was embedded in a larger set of personality and attitudes surveys completed at the every beginning of the experimental session. Participants completed these questionnaires in private. Participants were instructed to not make any identifying marks on the questionnaires and, upon completion, to place the questionnaires into a large envelope. These questionnaires remained in these envelopes until the completion of the study, at which time they were entered into a computer database.
The critical political orientation item asked participants to indicate their political orientation on a scale ranging from Extremely Liberal (–5) to Extremely Conservative (+5), with neutral corresponding to 0. This single item has been shown to provide a valid and reliable measure of political orientation that is very strongly predictive of intended and actual behavior (e.g., voting decisions).
References:
Knight, K., in Measures of Political Attitudes, J.P. Robinson, P.R. Shaver, & L.S. Wrightsman, Eds. (Academic Press, San Diego, 1999), pp. 59-158.
Jost, J., Am. Psychol. 61, 651-670 (2006).
The Cs pushed the letter m even when the letter w came up in a series of flashing m[s]; when they used a series of flashing w[s], Ls and Cs showed no signigicant difference in the errant m response.
7 subjects, 3Ls, 3Cs and one non-partisan; W[s] and M[s] the only two presses counted.
Someone responded that, according to an ABC exit poll of the 2000 presidential election, 80% of high school dropouts voted for Al Gore.
At any rate, this is just another "study" done by liberals to absolve other liberals of the choices that they make. Kind of like all the "homosexuality is biological and can't be helped" studies that get debunked every time a homosexual chooses to leave that lifestyle. Everyone chooses their beliefs and is responsible for the consequences resulting from acting on those choices.
The "study" is bogus.
The correctness of the response was measured. However, distinguishing an M from a W is different from many other situations. “Liberals too quickly make changes based upon spurious input” might be the result if we looked at more complex issues. They are extrapolating ridiculously.
bttt
“I wonder how they know who’s conservative and who’s liberal?”
Easy, all the dumb ones must be conservatives.
This never gets old for some liberals - at least those with the incredibly large chips on their shoulder. There was the “IQ by State” fraud sent around in 2000 and in 2004 after Democrats lost the election, purporting to show that blue states have a higher average IQ than red states. Of course, no such data exists.
Then there was the Morgan Quitno study (that I believe they do every year) that ranked the “smartest state” based on 21 factors. Seeing a correlation between the “smarter” states and their political leanings, liberals ran with it. Of course, a closer examination of the 21 factors revealed that as few as 8 actually dealt with intelligence while the remainder dealt primarily with money. (The one overarching factor seemed to be the belief that throwing money at schools makes your state “smarter.”)
I ran the numbers myself a few years back and determined that based on test scores, there was no statistically significant difference between the blue states and the red states. I found that ironic since the raw data (actual test scores) showed that blue states are statistically identical to red states. Now, with the Morgan Quitno study, they are assuming that throwing money at schools makes you “smarter” when it actually does nothing to improve performance. I wouldn’t remove it from the study, though. I’d actually penalize states that spend more money, since they clearly don’t understand they are wasting money.
Perhaps so, but in their surfeit of responsiveness to complexity, ambiguity and novelty they seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil or other basic concepts...
If liberals are so smart...why are they liberals?
Excellent point!
Who needs a rigged study, we’ve got Senators.
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