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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!
Hate leads to Anger... Anger leads to killing George Lucas for some really bad movies.
Republicans are cowards.
Yeah this discussion is going to go well...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
There was also a more indepth article about this last year in Psychology Today: http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20061222-000001.xml
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
In retrospect.... I'm in the UK, and the more right-wing the paper, the more knee-jerk to headlines.
I guess it's also what gives the conservatives (small c) that weird advantage in polls- their always more likely to be 'in tune' with the masses, because their opinions are always more likely to have been formed off the back of the most recent scare story.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
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.
\u262D = \u5350
They could startle easier because they're cowards. Or maybe they're just more situationally aware because they're not high.
I am a libertarian, and I tend to think that this is more common sense. If you are not afraid, then defense is not a high priority. If you feel afraid, then suddenly defending yourself becomes much more important. That the desire for greater defense spending increases as fear increases is common sense.
Capital punishment could be viewed in a similar vein, though I wonder if the correlation is as strong. Some people think that capital punishment is more effective than the alternatives.
Other issues, such as gun rights, also play into fear. Scared people are more likely to want to defend themselves.
Free market economics? I don't really see how fear could be used to promote that. In fact, I'd expect the opposite.
The researchers commented on this situation on NPR this morning. Yes, you could potentially see Republicans that way. But the researchers suggested that you could also see Democrats as "lacking in a basic sense of self-preservation."
The researchers went on to say that they don't believe that either label is appropriate. Rather, they hope both sides will use this information to better understand one another.
From my own perspective, I feel that it's also worth pointing out that both sides tend to follow their ideals. It's not like Republicans tend to avoid military service after demanding it, and it's not like Democrats seek military service due to a lack of self-preservation. The two sides merely react to certain stimulus, but the actual psychology of the drive is obviously more complex. Which leads me to my next point.
Many of the other researchers interviewed by NPR were skeptical of these findings. Their belief was that the study failed to show that these responses were set biologically and not by environmental stimuli. So in fact, it may be that Republicans are more suspicious of attacks than Democrats due to their environmental training. Which certainly seems more likely than dividing people up into "cowards" and "idiot-savants".
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged" - I guess the message there is supposed to be "having been mugged and now being familiar with the true nature of the world around them, they learned that the ideals they formerly embraced were foolishly misguided" but I always read it more as "having been mugged they allowed fear to take over their lives, replacing their sense of justice with a more Machiavellian approach to the world."
Bow-ties are cool.
This definitely affects Democrats, too. My father-in-law is a staunch democrat, and he's also very anxious all the time. It affects his political views because he worries greatly about things like health care and such, things which he thinks the gov't can protect us from.
There's a well-known saying: "A Democrat is a Republican who's been arrested, and a Republican is a Democrat who's been mugged."
I know that the saying works for me, too. My wife and I were the victims of gang violence (well, just some inner-city middle schoolers who broke our car window while we were in the car, causing my wife's face to bleed) and I definitely think it caused me to lean to the right, and more recently I was arrested (charges later dismissed) which caused me to not trust the police and lean to the left.
Now, I don't think I'm really on either side. The police aren't going to really do too much to you as long as you don't make their lives difficult, and I think I can handle myself and my family if the whole economy implodes. Politicians usually don't actually make you safer. Good neighbors, family, and friends do.
It seems to me that much of the current war on * sham is based on irrational fears. It's well known that humans have difficulty understanding on a qualitative level very low and very high probabilities.
So, for example, people might be far more concerned about being killed in a 9/11 repeat (5000 people) rather than in an automobile accident (~20,000 p/yr), despite the latter being far more of a risk to them.
Of course there are reasons to fear the former more than the latter that are reasonable, such as placing more value on how one dies than if (I don't consider this unreasonable; I'd rather be shot by a stranger than my best friend)
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
BOO! Hahaha.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No, MY beliefs are valid, not yours! Yours are silly and smell bad!
Invoke Godwin's law and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
FTA: "decided to test the idea that liberal and conservative (or "protective") social beliefs are related to individuals' sensitivity to threat."
So really what they tested was whether people who have more protective attitudes toward others react more to fear stimulus. Well, isn't that obvious? Correlation OR causation, it seems a pretty direct link that if you are afraid of something, you'd want to protect against it, and if you are afraid of more things, you'd want to protect against more things, and if the intensity of your fear is higher, the level of protection would increase.
So how on Earth did they translate that into "conservative" political views?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
They're not useless, they're just not reliable. They're important enough to warrant a larger study and find the real answer.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Arr... ye need not be fearin' silly things t' have a phobia, me hearty. Acrophobia be a very sensible fear, fer example.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
What if I think being politically motivated at all is a mental illness?
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
This introductory survey matches up nicely with Robert Altemeyer's more substantial body of work. See http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
I'm sorry, but what have you been smoking? I think I need some. People defined as liberal are rarely if ever the ones shouting down the opposition. If anything they like to talk everything out too much so nothing ever gets done. This is why the democratic party is so fragmented and why they frequently lose in elections because they don't have solidarity.
You seem to be describing the current republican party labeling descent as unAmerican or non-patriotic. As Stephen Colbert likes to say, "Why do you hate America?"
There is no mental defect in either way of thinking, there are well reasoned debaters on both sides and there are really bad opinions on both sides. What childish antics are you referring to when referring to "liberals?" I'm honestly curious because it's entirely possible I've been hiding in a cave the last 8 years.
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.
On a more rational (than my last post) note, how is it a defect to be more easily afraid? Fear is a GOOD thing when one is facing a real threat; it causes one to take actions to defend oneself (such as increasing military spending or reaching for a rock, as the case may be)
You could just as reasonably argue that liberals irrationally shrug off threats that are dangerous to them, and that they are incorrect, or make a more fair argument that people who hold extremist beliefs fair to accurately gauge risk.
Even if it is the liberals who are right and conservatives who are wrong here I hardly think you can call this a "disease", more a different worldview.
I'm a lot more scared of being abducted and held without trial by my own government than dying in a tiny terrorist attack; this is no more or less rational than someone with the opposite fears, and both are less rational than someone who is afraid of cars because of the risk of death.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Funny, I'm a social liberal, fiscally I run middle-ground (as long as there isn't deficit spending, I don't care what the government's budget is). As a social liberal, I'm more than happy to hear someone else's argument, nod in disagreement, and say "well, good thing we don't have to agree". I don't try to push my morals on anyone, so long as they give me the same leeway. I really don't see how that's evil. I think there would be a bunch of money left over for big planes and ships to keep enemy armies from invading my home, and ample money left over for healthcare, etc (although I would prefer the states to handle that), if they would stop blowing so much money on cracking down on consentual crimes, as well as ensure that education (you need a degree to do anything anymore) is affordable. If that makes me left-wing, so be it. But calling me evil, that's pretty well off the mark. Evil does require the desire for harm to come to another, so I'd be interested in how my views are "evil".
I got nuthin
Since it has now been determined that being a republican is biologically based, now you are just a hater and a bigot.
Dude, not everyone who's on welfare is lazy. Besides, it's not right to punish a child for their parent being a fuckwit.
This is a land of opportunity - without some basic assistance, some people will HAVE no opportunity. Look at my girlfriend. Her mother can't work because of a VERY serious back problem; her father won't do a damn thing to help. Without some assistance, she wouldn't be able to do a damn thing with her life.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
A crucifix?
Since the US is the leading user of recreational drugs in the world ( the amount of money US citizens spend on illegal substances dwarfs the budgets of most countries), we should really take illegal drug use into account when we interpret most American social behavior.
The right wingers tend to be split into two big groups: The wealthier old money types and the poorer rural types.
The left wingers are wealthier intellectuals and poorer hipsters.
The wealthy right wingers can afford more cocaine and the poorer use the most popular rural drug Meth. These substances make them jumpier and more paranoid.
The left wingers tend top have the pot smokers, so they are more mellow.
</sarcasm>
Maybe the fear or lack of it follows from the behavior?
"And my fear is being an obnoxious blabbermouth." - Willow
From "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Episode: "Beneath You"
Umm, yes, I am for healthcare, but if you noticed in my previous post, I said the states should handle that one. And yes, I do think education should be affordable, and again, I don't think the Feds should be doing that, just that I wouldn't go absolutely ape shit about it should they do it. They already do much more that isn't in the constitution (consentual crimes). I merely pointed out that both sides could have what they want, if they would stop trying to enforce the "christian" morals (that are way off base anyway, but that's another subject entirely, and I really don't want to go there).
I got nuthin
I don't think acting out of a perceived need of self preservation is how I would define cowardice.
Actually I think that's the definition of cowardice.
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.
As we observe in nature, only the paranoids survive. The others are just nuts. LOL.
Liberal, OTOH, cherish the prospect of being raped?
Nope; people who don't have a phobia of tigers aren't exactly having masochistic thoughts about the concept of being attacked by one. If you have to either fear something or love something, life would be much different.
And yes, some Liberal thinking people do enjoy the idea of having consensual anal sex. Welcome to reality.
Hopefully you aren't the kind of person who has his or her suspicions about x, y, and z (all different than you) taking over the country.
Yep, as long as your foes are the vile, immoral, baby-eating minions of evil that you envision them to be, then clearly reasoned debate has no place here. Shades of gray have no sway in a monochromatic worldview. Someone has to be the good guy, and someone has to be the bad guy, just like they were in the cartoons of my youth.
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.
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.
As Dr. G astutely pointed out today, an increased startle response for conservative types (as opposed to liberal types) in the lab may be misleading. Some conservatives are inherently mistrustful of science, psychologists, academia, etc. and may well have been uneasy or uncomfortable while hooked up to some arcane machinery in an academic lab inhabited by those they didn't trust. Imagine what the liberals' startle response might be if the tests were conducted in a different manner - e.g. by soldiers, and within the confines of a military base.
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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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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.
yes, but the middle class is disappearing so that we're becoming a nation of a few ultra-rich and many poor.
I hope you don't think that Democrats are the party that cares and the Republicans are the party that doesn't.
Pretending to care is one of the most effective forms of political pandering, and who's to say what a politician's true feelings are?
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Incite and flee.
Oh please. Left wingers are just as happy to surrender their civil rights... And who voted for the Patriot Act? Yep, both sides of the aisle.
It's important not to confuse "left wing" or "liberal" with "Democratic Party". The current Democratic party holds to liberal ideals about as well as the current Republican party holds to conservative ideals.
I never understood why some people are disturbed by homosexuality in others. So what if there are some people who like to have sex at home -- what's the big deal?
republicans are known to give more to charity than democrats.
It's not fair counting the $85 billion bailout of AIG as "charity"
The best government is a weak, ineffective government.
Best of all is if congress can be tied up worrying about steroids in professional sports.
Unfortunately their power can't be limited to such matters, so stuff like that is used as diversionary sideshows, while they're hustling cash and handing it out through 'community organizers' and similar mechanisms.
In the US, we have an odd pairing of free market liberalization with social conservativeness, and on the other side a pairing of social welfare and government interventionism with social liberalness. It's an extremely odd pairing. Here you've got someone who is fearful, and therefore favors a strong national defense and government regulation of immorality. That person would naturally lean Republican. You might also assume that same person might be equally fearful of financial or health difficulties, and might therefore favor government-provided safety nets. Well, in the US you'd be dead wrong, because that person would be more likely to be a Democrat.
To a large degree, this artificial pairing limits the options for the libertarian-minded. Either we have government interference in our bedrooms, or in our wallets, pick your poison. It also potentially limits the Republican Party's social conservative agenda. For instance, would abortions be less commonplace or even irrelevant if young women had access to more affordable health care, maternity leave, daycare, and other forms of government-provided social services?
I'd love to see the same study performed in Europe, where the pairings of social conservatives and fiscal conservatives isn't so strong.
According to TFA, the questions did not identify party affiliation, but rather social attitudes. For example:
They then went on to suggest that the "fearful" reactions aligned with what we regard as "conservative" social attitudes.
Even the authors don't conclude that this means Republicans are more fearful than Democrats, only that the study suggests a genetic predisposition to a political viewpoint.
These parties would happily change their platforms if it netted them more votes
True. An excellent example is the attitude of the two parties toward civil rights, which were originally championed by the Republican party and opposed by the Democrats during the Civil War and Reconstruction; by the 1960's the Dems made civil rights a central part of their platform, and Republicans took the opposite tack to win white votes in southern states, by supporting "states rights".
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