Are conservatives inherently deranged?

[j_b]

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/headcase.html

 

Those crazy conservatives

Their reaction to a new study confirms it

 

BY CLIFF BOSTOCK

 

Are conservatives inherently deranged?

 

A storm has been brewing the last few months over a study about political conservatism published in the May issue of the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin. The study, which identified a handful of psychological traits that conservatives tend to have in common, has outraged everyone from Ann Coulter to George Will.

 

The study -- actually a meta-analysis of 50 years of research literature on the psychology of conservatism -- identifies two core traits of conservatives: resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality. Among the associated psychological factors of conservatism, the study cites fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure and terror management.

 

Although the authors of the study insist they are not pathologizing conservatism, it's hard not to be sympathetic with critics since they do also cite "lowered self-esteem ... pessimism, disgust and contempt." At the same time, it doesn't take an effete intellectual to conclude that the study considers ideology on a scale affected by characteristics we all share. Obviously, Mussolini and Hitler were more tolerant of inequality than Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan, but the fundamental tendency to devalue diversity is consistent among them. And it is more present than it is in people characterized as liberal, who have their own set of problematic features.

 

The authors explain that they elected to study conservatism instead of liberalism because there simply are not enough psychological studies of liberal movements to perform a meaningful meta-analysis. Most of the damaging movements of the last 50 years have been right-wing, they say.

 

The reaction of conservatives, unfortunately, has done nothing but reinforce the study's observations. One of my favorite examples is the National Review's indignant response to the comparison of Mussolini and Reagan. Sharing the same Web page carrying Byron York's pissed-off column is an ad that compares Hillary Clinton to Saddam Hussein.

 

Besides the obvious irony, the ad illustrates the bad logic of another argument used to attack the study: Left-wing ideologues, such as Stalin, Krushchev and Castro, demonstrate most of the same characteristics that the study attributes to far-right conservatives, critics say. Obviously, though, once those men came to power, they became staunch conservatives, devoting all their energies to maintaining the status quo. Thus, Stalin the communist can be typed a conservative in the same way right-wingers can call Hillary a leftist but identify her, as an authoritarian presence, with Saddam, who's as far right as you can get.

 

If there is a form of mental illness associated with conservative thought, its poster child is Ann Coulter. She is the shining example of intolerance of ambiguity, otherwise expressed as the need to think in pure terms of good and evil. She is so loony that even the National Review fired her when she wrote that America should invade the Islamic nations, kill their leaders and convert their populations to Christianity. In her new book, Treason, she canonizes notorious Commie-hunter Joseph McCarthy as a saint and, acting just like him, calls all liberals traitors.

 

In Coulter's world, there is no middle ground. The radical division of the world into good (conservative) and evil (liberal) requires a willful self-blindness since, of course, life often paints itself in gray tones instead of solid black or white. The most obnoxious example is Coulter's inability to recognize that her personal experience differs from her rhetoric. If, as she complains, the media is run by such a radical cult of information-manipulating leftists, why is it impossible to open a magazine or turn on the television and radio without encountering her? Why did Crown, well known for its roster of liberal authors, pick her up after HarperCollins, well known for its conservative writers, dropped her?

 

Conservative columnist George Will raised the inevitable question about the study by asking if conservatism is even an appropriate subject of study for psychologists. "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses," he writes sarcastically, actually misreading the study, which said nothing about neurosis. Nonetheless, his comment communicates his disdain for psychology's meddling in the question of ideology's formation at all, as if belief were unaffected by psychological states.

 

Actually, it's long past time for psychology to more aggressively break out of the consulting room to ask how our lives are affected by the greater culture, instead of focusing so intently on family dynamics. It would be virtually impossible, for example, to explain in personalistic terms why Americans have so willingly swallowed the Bush administration's lies about its tax cuts and the Iraq invasion. This study, however, goes a long way in explaining how an intolerance for ambiguity and the urgent need for closure can cause us to reach premature conclusions -- especially when we are terrified by events like Sept. 11. Thus right-wing populism gains its greatest foothold when our terror and need for security are amplified -- either by reality or the voice of demagogues.

 

Conservatism is, of course, not a mental illness. But its adherents can become sheep -- terrified but contemptuous followers of tyrants -- when life doesn't satisfy their need for black-and-white solutions.

 

 

[Sphinx]

Nice troll. Yes, indeed, 45% or so of America's population is clinically insane. Hence, if Trask beats the hell out of you, it's not his fault. Savvy?

[MysticNacho]

Wasn't aggression listed as one of those traits, Sphinx?

[Sphinx]

Yeah, but isn't intelligence, too?

[JayB]

Yeah - the author's of the study are behind this one all of the way.... Melbourne (Australia, not Florida) Age

 

"Whatever they are, conservatives are not stupid and one of them, me, has taken the trouble to find the article in Psychological Bulletin and read it.

 

I have also contacted the leading researcher, Professor John Jost of Stanford University, to see what he and his colleagues think about Mr Jones's summary of their work, based on 50 years of research.

 

Well, the Americans did not conclude anything of the sort attributed to them by Mr Jones. And they are particularly irate at this persistent distortion of their work; for it is not the first time a "conservative baiter", as Mr Jones describes himself, has misused their research.

 

"The 'gang of three' was not," Professor Jost has written, "a focus of the research at all; this is clearly a red herring."

 

Moreover, he and his colleagues have already had to deal with the offensive allegation that their study showed that conservatives were in some way sick or suffer from neuroses. They never used the word, or even the concept or notion, and have been seriously misrepresented.

 

But if the American research project was not the crude branding and denunciation of conservatives in which Mr Jones engaged, what was it? It was, in fact, a scientific study to see what, if any, motivational concerns there were that prompted a disposition to conservative political views.

 

Some that were found were the need that conservatives have for structure and order, their avoidance of uncertainty, their reaction to threats, and their need for certainty and closure.

 

The psychologists who conducted the study were at pains to point out that there was nothing wrong in these motives, that without exception they were "normal", and that they were only "capable of contributing" to conservative views and only "partially explain" the core of political conservatism.

 

Moreover, the same research showed that "liberals" (our left-wingers) are "relatively disorganised, indecisive and perhaps overly drawn to ambiguity". So they are not perfect either.

 

In any event, the researchers say, isolating these motivations of left and right "does not constitute a valid argument in a political debate any more than it does in scientific debates. What counts is the cogency of the political arguments and the degree to which they fit with independently verifiable facts and reasonable assumptions."

 

 

[Sphinx]

Thanks Jay, now I'll be able to sleep tonight. Whew!

[Dru]

are mental patients allowed to vote in the US?

[JayB]

The best part of that article was the assertion that Stalin, Mao, and all of their miscellaneous henchmen weren't actually Leftists after all. Glad they cleared that one up.

[Dru]

Stalin was demonstrably counterrevolutionary. Witness how he offed all the real revolutionaries.

[Dan_Harris]

Mama we're all crazee now - Slade

[j_b]

let's have the authors speak ....

 

http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/Jost/_private/Political_Conservatism_as_Motivated_Social_Cognition.pdf

 

abstract: Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (au-thoritarianism, dogmatism—intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r = .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism—intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (—.32); uncertainty tolerance (—.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (—.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (—.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.

 

excerpts:

 

the disadvantaged might embrace right-wing ideologies under some circumstances to reduce fear,anxiety, dissonance, uncertainty, or instability (e.g., Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003; Lane, 1962; Nias, 1973), whereas the advantaged might gravitate toward conservatism for reasons of self-interest or social dominance (e.g., Centers, 1949; Sidanius & Ekehammar, 1979; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).

 

Relations between resistance to change and acceptance of inequality.

Although we believe that the two core dimensions of political conservatism—resistance to change and acceptance of inequality—are often related to one another, they are obviously distinguishable. Vivid counterexamples come to mind in which the two dimensions are negatively related to one another. For instance, there is the “conservative paradox” of right-wing revolutionaries, such as Hitler or Mussolini or Pinochet, who seem to advocatesocial change in the direction of decreased egalitarianism. In at least some of these cases, what appears to be a desire for change is really “an imaginatively transfigured conception of the past with which to criticize the present” (Muller, 2001, p. 2625). There are also cases of left-wing ideologues who, once they are in power, steadfastly resist change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism, such as Stalin or Khrushchev or Castro (see J. Martin, Scully, & Levitt, 1990). It is reasonable to suggest that some of these historical figures may be considered politically conservative, at least in the context of the systems they defended.4 The clearest example seems to be Stalin, who secretly admired Hitler and identified with several right-wing causes (including anti-Semitism). [...] In terms ofhis psychological makeup as well, Stalin appears to have had much in common with right-wing extremists (see, e.g., Birt, 1993; Bullock, 1993; Robins & Post, 1997).

 

 

etc ..., boy this is fun. did you notice when they say that stalin, castro et al are actually conservatives

 

[JayB]

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, were not Leftists. Right.

[murraysovereign]

JayB said:

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, were not Leftists. Right.

 

Actually, when you get out into the extremes, the whole "Left/Right" method of characterizing individuals starts to break down. Stalin and Mao both instituted highly centralized systems in which the government exercised almost total control over every aspect of daily life. So did Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler's National Socialism placed the needs of the individual well below the needs of the "Volk": hardly what we would consider "right-wing" thinking, but he is typically considered to be the poster boy for the extreme right. Stalin holds the same position for the extreme left, but Stalinism had about as much to do with Marx's socialism as Rush Limbaugh's form of conservatism has to do with that of George III.

 

Pol Pot is truly in a league of his own, neither left nor right, just "out there". There's someone who at least fits the "inherently deranged" hypothesis.

[JayB]

Stalin is in fact a direct ideological heir of Marx's. The Real Marx - not the fantasy Marx that just wanted everyone in the playground to share. When Eduard Bernstein, Marx and Engel's leading disciple began to take note of the fact that both wages and living conditions had steadily improved over the course of the latter half of the nineteenth century, rather than steadily deteriorating as Marx's thesis had predicted, he suggested that advocating stepwise reform in pursuit of concrete benefits within the existing system would be the most beneficial path for the workers to follow, and was villified by both as a result. They stated many times in their work that if the workers could not be counted on to bring the revolution themselves, they (the intellectual elite)would have to bring it for them. With this objective in mind, they stated their categorical opposition to any measures which would lessen the worker's plight, as their increased comfort might well make them less receptive towards the revolution that they would bring on their behalf. Lenin agreed with the notion that it was the revolutionary vanguard's duty to force a revolution upon the workers from above, using any means necessary. In both his objectives and his methods, Lenin was every bit Stalin's inspriation and mentor. The historical record is quite clear on this, and it is a fact that no fans of state enforced collectivism on the Left will ever be able to erase.

[babnik]

Dru said:

are mental patients allowed to vote in the US?

 

dunno, but i herd a few dead ones voted for gore.

[allthumbs]

 

Dru said:

are mental patients allowed to vote in the US?

No

 

[lummox]

Dru said:

are mental patients allowed to vote in the US?

depends. no if youve been involuntarily committed (like ya took some pop shots at the president to impress your make believe girlfriend). yes if your just seeing a shrink and taking meds (that includes people hearing voices and shit). 'god bless the usa where at least i know im free.'

[allthumbs]

Dru, are you allowed to vote in Kanada?

[Sphinx]

trask said:

Dru, are you allowed to vote in Kanada?

No.

[TIGHE]

Sphinx said:

trask said:

Dru, are you allowed to vote in Kanada?

No.

 

Dru=Sphinx?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[allthumbs]

TIGHE said:

Sphinx said:

trask said:

Dru, are you allowed to vote in Kanada?

No.

 

Dru=Sphinx?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

you didn't know that?

[TIGHE]

trask said:

TIGHE said:

Sphinx said:

trask said:

Dru, are you allowed to vote in Kanada?

No.

 

Dru=Sphinx?

 

you didn't know that?

 

I guess I do now!

[sk]

trask said:

TIGHE said:

Sphinx said:

trask said:

Dru, are you allowed to vote in Kanada?

No.

 

Dru=Sphinx?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

you didn't know that?

liar liar pants on fire

[Sphinx]

What grade are you in, Muffy?

[sk]

Sphinx said:

What grade are you in, Muffy?

I'm not sure... hold on I will ask my teacher