Posted on 07/22/2003 5:46:29 PM PDT by TheAngryClam
BERKELEY – 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.
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."
This guy is trippin' A f'ing wrongo!!!
I can believe that this mental midget is actually getting paid for spawning such hateful nazi propaganda on a subject he has never ever lived.
I heard on Michael Savage's Savage Nation Talk Show a blurb from a speech the impeached former President Clinton gave in England recently talking gibberish about conservatives being the 4th way much along the same line as the nazi's used.
You know it is obvious by now the Clinton's who reason for living now is to totally decimate the conservative/republican political party, and marginaize and demonize any good American citizen who affiliates with the consservative movement.
How very much like Stalin the Clintonites operate. This sad sack overpaid prof, certainly is an example of one who is, and I quote directly from the mouth of this idiot,"... more comfortable seeing and stating things in black and white in ways that would make liberals" conservatives "squirm," Glaser said.
If you want to understand conservatism, or liberalism or radicalism or socialism, start with people's interests, look at their ideas of justice and move on to their visions of the future. I'd have to say that if one wants to be scientific (or pretend to be scientific), one ought to take a "unified field" approach. One has to get far enough away from all ideologies to see how they all function, and not to treat one or another as a "problem" to be explained (or explained away).
If one starts from history, one sees how any ideology can be harmful to society or humanity or individuals, and how other ideologies develop to counter it. To write conservatism (or liberalism or radicalism) off as something to be explained away or overcome is to reveal oneself to be a shallow provincial.
Worship of "openness" is one of the Achilles heels of Sixties' social science. Openness also has to be seen in context, and its limitations and possible harmfulness. Openness across the board, openness to everything is impossible, and if it were, it would hardly be beneficial.
Another fallacy of these studies is that whenever an idea is established it's seen as conservative or right-wing. A Canadian social scientist defined authoritarianism and repression as inherently right-wing, because the left was by definition critical of authority and out of power. Clearly, this is playing games with language. There have been left-wing authoritarianisms, left-wing repressiveness, and left-wing closemindedness. To deny this is to play with a stacked deck.
Frank Sulloway wrote the book on the death of Freudianism. If this is what replaces Freud, it doesn't look much like an improvement.
This report is the abortive result of academia mating politics with the pseudoscience of psychology. It was dead before full term.
Research studies are the first step.
Let's see the profile of agents of social change, radicals, aka today's right!
- Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Need for cognitive closure
- Terror management
Ahhh..., the liberals in glass houses are throwing stones....
Gee, and here I thought it was conservatives in the 50's and 60's who wanted to "rollback" communism, while liberals argued for "containment" (i.e. acceptance of the status quo).
Then I thought it was the notorious conservative (and un-nuanced, war-mongering "cowboy") Ronald Wilson Reagan who radically altered American foreign policy in a bid to defeat the Soviet Union and simultaneously did a complete 180 in domestic fiscal and regulatory policy, just on the say-so of some Austrian economists who virtually no one else (save for another conservative in England) listened to. I also seem to remember that it was liberals (and "conservatives" like Kissinger most closely allied with the elite-liberal "establishment") who insisted that we musn't perturb the delicate balance of "detente" (their new word for refusing to change or contest the status quo) and that we must accept the inevitability of inflation and economic stagnation, and continue with the economic policy of the preceeding decade.
Then I thought it was George W. Bush who said we could fundamentally restructure the Middle East, and even act "preemptively," while it was again liberals who didn't want to change the status quo, and even wanted us to effectively pretend (in terms of the alliances and interational institutions we must adhere to) that the Cold War had never ended!
Boy, that last bit seems really clear and recent, but I must be delusional since these researchers at Berkeley seem certain that conservatives are fearful of and adverse to change.
(Or could they have accidently reversed the words "conservative" and "liberal" in the press release?)
Gee, liberal researchers at liberal universities have no information about the psychological motivations of liberals...
Who would have ever guessed...?
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