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Political Viewpoints Linked To Fear
Pentagram writes "Researchers writing in Science report that the political orientation of test subjects who have strong views is linked to how easy they are to startle. They found that subjects who were more fearful were more likely to have right wing views, such as being in favor of capital punishment and higher defense budgets. The researchers suggest that this psychological difference is why it is so difficult to change people's minds in political arguments."
Easily startled people carry guns, so be careful out there!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I think being startled has much more to do with the ability to concentrate than with fear.
I am the most startled person I know... If I am concentrating on something, I make a total vacuum, I block all my senses... if at that point I am distracted by someone I will jump a foot in the air and scream. I don't consider myself fearful though.
Right wing in the US has, for most of its existence, been isolationist and thus favored less military rather than more. I don't believe there's any connection.
All in all, this research is probably crap.
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Strictly speaking, fear doesn't make one a coward. Acting only on that fear is what makes one a coward.
Do a search on:
"The Power of Nightmares..."
Its six hours long, but well worth the time.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Talk about fear of competing ideas, you Libs need a mirror. Variations of this story appear here and on every libtard site every few weeks now, claiming conservative ideas are the result of mental defect. Because if you can keep that idea formly in yer heads you can justify the childish antics you guys normally do when exposed to a different set of ideas, shout it down. Because if the other side is mentally ill there isn't a reason to even allow them to speak.
To a liberal, 'diversity' is defined as all colors, gender identities and faiths all thinking exactly alike. Because the one thing liberalism can't tolerate is reasoned debate since the whole system is based on emotion.
No, I don't think liberalism is a mental illness in return. I think it is evil. You guys have free will, you chose the wrong side. Of course you convince yourselves that notions like good and evil are outdated because few will admit to serving evil so you solve that problem by handwaving the whole question away.
Wow, your sane, calm, and carefully-reasoned response has totally convinced me.
Yeah, I'm often doubtful about these sorts of psychology stories, but this one actually makes a certain sort of sense to me. In the traditional meaning of the word, being "conservative" means that you dislike quick and drastic changes. The idea that there would be a connection between disliking change quick changes (moving from the known to the unknown) and being generally more fearful and easily startled doesn't seem strange or surprising.
Also, the connections between being more fearful, wanting a strong army, and wanting to be "tough on crime" seem pretty clear. You could have convinced me without research.
On the other hand, none of this necessarily means that these opinions are wrong. Even if they're more fearful, it's not clear that it means they're "too fearful". I'm not trying to argue that they are or that they aren't, but just suggesting that we all try to avoid jumping to conclusions. (I'm also not accusing the parent post of claiming that it means they're wrong)
That saying has an important corollary: "A liberal is a conservative who has been laid off". It applies equally well as the first, and taken together they illustrate that both left wing and right allow themselves to be ruled by fear, differing only in what particular things they're afraid of.
I'm sure that they're confusing authoritarian with economically right, both of which describe Republicans, but two entirely separate things.
/. would argue to the contrary.
It's entirely possible to be extremely to the economic left and still be every bit if not more authoritarian than the Republican party tends to be. Just look at the USSR under Stalin.
It's also entirely possible to be extremely to the economic right and be very non-authoritarian. Probably the best example of this would be the American Libertarian party which has a strong free market belief as well as a very hands-off approach to government involvement in the personal lives of people.
Check out http://www.politicalcompass.org/ for a better explanation and to see where different political parties from different parts of the world are at. I've found a lot of interesting things on that site. The most interesting to me is that the vast majority of European governments aren't too far off of the US Democratic party, despite what a lot of European posters on
As opposed to the classic riposte "a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested." Both sides paint the other as out of touch.
... I don't think acting out of a perceived need of self preservation is how I would define cowardice.
In my opinion, I see taking away liberty, and privacy cowardly. I know some Democrats want to do this as well (and already have voted for it), but I see a lot more of it on the Republican side.
Theft if theft. I'm by no means rich, but I pay 28% of my income to the government and something tells me not even a whole 1% actually helps care for poor children... dropping bombs, invading countries, corporate bailouts, welfare to able bodies, spying on citizens...
Need I go on about the various horrors that the wealth I make for 2hours and 20minutes out of every day enables? Here is a novel thought, why don't they not take my money and I can give it directly to the poor children. Why does the government need a cut?
Here, please educate yourself
Money is the root of all evil?
I don't think acting out of a perceived need of self preservation is how I would define cowardice.
No, but being too quick to "perceive" such a need -- that's cowardice.
(Over-re)acting out of all proportion to the severity of the threat -- that's cowardice.
Letting it skew your priorities to the point that you neglect to protect yourself against other (less dramatic but equally or more important) dangers -- that's not only cowardice, it's stupid and makes you less safe.
Allowing your rights to be violated whenever the administration says "Grant us this expanded executive power, or we'll let the terrorists kill you" -- that's cowardice.
Does that clear anything up?
David Gould
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Except when you percieve innocent things, like gay marriage, as a threat to your self preservation.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
I actually see it somewhat orthogonal to that. In many ways, the democrats are optimists while the republicans are pessimists.
I disagree completely. Republicans are the optimists! They tend to think that:
- private charities will be enough to help the poor
- abstinence education is the best sex education
- people know how to best manage their own money
- terrorists can be contained and killed-off
If pulled off properly, communism is the ideal economic system.
Communism takes away many freedoms, and is only "perfect" from an authoritarian perspective. Perfect to MANY people would be a world in which everyone gets along without a strong government to impede.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
A very easy example: An easily frightened solider is walking in the woods. He hears something and is frightened, and immediately flinches. A bullet flies over his head, and he turns and returns fire, killing the enemey. A few miles away, another solider is walking. He is not easily frightened or startled. He hears something, and calmly turns his head in the direction of the sound. The bullet goes straight through his face, killing him.
In an fundementally safe society like America in the 21st century, being easily frightened may seem like a defect, but you can't necessarily say that's true. Say there's a threat who's actual impact is unknowable to a given sample of people. People who are very frighetend of it may want to react more than peope who aren't easily frightened, but since we don't know the actual level of the threat, we can't tell if group A is over-reaction or group B is under-reacting. I'm sure there's some rad game theory solution to that problem.
Closer to home, I was definitely a nerd-tastic "flincher" in high school -- jocks could make a fist five feet away from me and I'd flinch and duck. Was I a pussy? Maybe, but I also got randomly punched a lot less than some of my less reactive friends.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
That just depends on which liberties you're watching.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
That makes me wonder:
Are fearful people more likely to be against gun control or for it? I can see fear playing a part in both sides of the issue.
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Incite and flee.
Ahem - they are **reporting** that they have better mental health. Doesn't mean they're actually healthier. In fact, they could just be more fearful that other people will think they're nuts.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Oh please. Left wingers are just as happy to surrender their civil rights. Left wingers are the ones that are always worried about "offending" people, remember? And who voted for the Patriot Act? Yep, both sides of the aisle.
You're not going to find any "brave and bold people willing to live free" with either the Dems or the Reps. Only the Libertarians care about such concepts.
Aristotle says the virtues are always midpoints between extremes, and the extremes are vices.
The opposite of cowardice isn't courage, it's rashness. Courage is the temperate midpoint between the vice of cowardice and the vice of rashness. Courage accepts danger but acts, which makes it different from either extreme.
Rashness and cowardice are the kinds of superficial opposites that have many inner similarities. The coward fears to act, and the fool fears to think.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"socially rebellious" and "left wing" do not mix so well.
The left wing is just as conformist as the right wing.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
A November 2007 Gallup poll reveals that Republicans by a wide margin across all age, gender, income, and education levels report significantly better mental health than Democrats and Independents.
Just to be clear. They rate their own mental health as excellent. They believe they're the ones who are sane and everybody else is crazy.
PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls.
It appears Democrats at least have an open mind to the possibility of being wrong.
-[d]-
If we can open that argument up I'm convinced it will be as easy to convince the undecided that the core of the Democratic party is indeed evil as it was to win the argument the Soviet Union was utterly Evil.
Unless you believe that the core of the Republican party is also evil, I'm afraid I can't support your position.
I'm younger than you are, so I missed the Cold War scare that you're referring to. Consequently, I don't have an irrational fear and hatred of the USSR drilled into me, so telling me that the Democratic party is as evil as Russia was in Reagan's day just doesn't make the emotional connection you were going for.
I can see that if you start with the premise that Cold War era Russia was inherently evil, and the Democratic party promotes some of the same ideas that were a cornerstone of Russian society, then the Democratic party must be evil because those ideas must be evil. However, please try to understand that many of us do not take this premise to be a given. If you believe socialized healthcare is evil, you'll have to argue the case for why it is evil, not just draw a connection to Russia. If you believe a so-called "progressive" tax system (in which wealthier people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes) is evil, you'll have to explain why it's evil. If you believe that charging suspected terrorists with crimes and prosecuting them in a court of law, rather than simply detaining them without charge indefinitely and subjecting them to torture, is evil, you'll have to explain why. If you believe requiring a warrant in order to eavesdrop on someone's phone calls is evil, make your case.
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Yes, but that's only a subset of the left, and a more extreme subset at that.
Ask yourself how mentally "weird" the people on the extreme right tend to be. Think of the hardcore fundamentalist Christians, alcoholic rednecks, etc. In my (anecdotal) experience, such folks tend to be more likely to exhibit signs of extreme narcissism or borderline sociopathy and psychopathy.
So consider the possibility that both of our anecdotal observations are accurate, and consider it along with jbeach's point about the unreliability of polls that depend on self-reported data. Which group do you think is more likely to acknowledge that they have a mental problem? The group with the redneck who beats his dog, or the one with the goth chick who cuts on herself? The "crazy Jesus lady" or the schizophrenic artist?
Granted, none of my speculations here are what you'd call scientific, but then neither are yours, and the Gallup poll wasn't either for the reason jbeach pointed out. All it tells you is that more conservative people claim, when polled, claim to have better mental health, compared to the claims of liberals.
When it comes to the physiological response, a more complete description might be "fight or flight", as Fear and Aggression are closely linked. In addition, I've noticed that Conservatives tend to be afraid of People, while Liberals tend to be afraid of Things.
To clarify, I mean that Conservatives seem to focus on threats with a human face -- foreign terrorists and rogue dictators without; criminals, illegal immigrants, and gays within (gays are a particularly interesting example of "threat", due to an odd mix of cultural and psychological reasons, instead of being any threat to life/liberty/livelihood). This leads to harsher law enforcement and big military budgets.
While Liberals seem to focus on systematic dangers, like pollution or global warming. This leads to lots of attention to things like pesticides, endocrine disruptors, and genetically modified organisms; resulting in lots of regulation and governmental intervention.
Actually, it's not a straw-man argument, it's an illustration of a fallacy. A well-known fallacy, in fact -- the fallacy of compromise. While some sort of compromise is very often useful or effective, it does not follow logically that a compromise between two arbitrary suggestions is necessarily superior. In many cases, a "compromise solution" makes no sense; in others, it's clearly not the "fair" choice.
There is no innate "middle ground". If you define it as a "reasonable compromise", you're imposing a particular person's arbitrary sense of "reasonable" anyway.
Anyway, yes. Fallacy of compromise.
Let me see if I got this straight, the experienced Republican PRESIDENTIAL nominee chose poorly because he selected as his running mate someone no more qualified to be President than the Democratic PRESIDENTIAL candidate?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison