folk theory says that adversity in early life toughens you up, makes you hardened and "streetwise." it turns out, however, to be just the opposite. early-life adversity may make people second-guess themselves instead, and therefore be more susceptible to persuasion.

this counterintuitive study reminds me of a recent survey that found that the more education one has, the more likely s/he is to believe in the possibility of paranormal activity. this is interesting, esp. given the inverse relationship between education and religiosity.

the relationship makes me wonder the cause of the alleged correlation between education level and ideology. it doesn't necessarily take smarter people to appreciate the nuances of theories on paranormal activity (although mulder was quite hot intelligent). this seems to partially refute the theory that the more erudite are liberal because they are more well-educated and intelligent.

but can we relate this study to the belief that an earthly "higher power," i.e. the government, almost paranormal in capability, can solve society's woes?

Labels: ideology, social

some stereotypes of the average left and right american seem to hold up. a new survey of voter personality suggests that the average center-left voter is friendlier and more benevolent, cooperative, polite, and open. the center-right voter is more secure, energetic, traditional, and conscientious.

of course, it is unclear whether such traits and values make one more likely to be a liberal or conservative, or whether "membership" in an ideological community or thinking about the logical consequences of one's ideology bends personality over time (a la cognitive dissonance perhaps?). to answer this question, we'd have to discover which came first, personality or ideology, or if they are reciprocally influential.

the statistical significance* of these results implies that there is such a thing as one true "liberal" and "conservative," casting doubt on the idea of at least one kind of diversity in political parties. in fact, a new study by dan klein (PDF) surveyed a large group of academics on voting behavior and policy issues. results indicate that policy preference among conservatives is rather diverse, with wide-ranging views on tariffs, drug controls, marriage, etc. however, modern liberalism was not such a big tent philosophy. liberal academics, it turns out, give nearly the same response to most policy questions.

so given the results of klein's study in light of this new one, it may be that traits and values commonly held by liberals lend themselves more readily to interpreting policy in one particular way. that is, their personality characteristics are a more useful or universal "lens" through which to interpret societal ideas.

then are conservative decisions based on more rational calculations? conservatives should not toot their horns too soon, as recent evidence suggests that most individuals, regardless of ideology, make their policy decisions based on emotion rather than rational thought. so perhaps conservative values and traits are just less relevant to the political world (which may make sense looking at the traits; i don't think this kind of "energetic" has anything to do with enron).

*interestingly, emotional stability was not strongly correlated with either voting pattern. :)

Labels: decision making, ideology, political

"If anyone in Washington is skeptical about these findings, they are in denial."

today the washington post has an interesting article on implicit racial bias and voter preference focusing on research suggesting white conservatives have stronger implicit bias against blacks than do liberals. the study's not published yet, so i can't say much about it except the following: the study seems to be utilizing an outdated - or at best simplistic - understanding of bias. recent studies have shown that, given an additional 500 milliseconds, most implicit reactions disappear and the brain utilizes more advanced regions, such as the frontal cortex, instead of the amygdala which is activated in the shorter-response-time studies (30 milliseconds).

so do these initial amygdala reactions matter at all for behavior? are conservatives in general really more racist? i don't know. either way, let's not forget about the frontal cortex either.

the 500 millisecond article was published in psychological science, but i forget the actual reference - if i find it i'll post it as an update here. i blogged about it before, but archives are temporarily missing b/c of the transition to a new URL.

thanks to nigel for the article.

Labels: ideology

a new study suggests that political decision making and analytical thinking may be opposed, illustrating the neural substrates of confirmation bias (tendency to ignore facts opposing your view and seek those confirming it).

in the study, staunch political party members evaluated data critical of their candidate - george w or john kerry's - position on an issue. brain scans revealed no activity in areas of conscious analytical thought, but instead in emotional circuits including conflict and disgust. reward centers took over when subjects came to their decisions.

we are a jaded polity; most of us (justly) feel that politicians manipulate facts. i'm not sure the study says much more than that. once someone's convinced, by whatever method, that her party or candidate is usually correct, that trust makes her likely to be skeptical of any information contradicting the party tract. it's energy and time efficient; it's farming out work to an institution you trust.

so does this say something horrible about us? should we feel guilty for not being analytical enough? not necessarily. at most, it illustrates one of the dangers of direct democracy. perhaps we aren't really cut out to make decisions for everyone.

unfortunately, the study did not look at independent or swing voters, or even party folks who are less involved. i'd also like to see if brain activity differs between issues of greater or lesser personal and worldwide importance, and unfamiliar issues.

thanks to tenacious jdt for the link.

Labels: decision making, ideology

the ny times reports that a rouge shade is strongly correlated to successful sports teams. my initial reaction was that it must be different for political philosophies. even if not:

This does not mean that a bad team can reverse its fortunes by wearing red, Dr. Barton said. The study applies only to closely matched competitors. "If you're hopeless," he said, "then wearing red isn't going to make you start winning."

someone had to say it!

Labels: ideology, social

i don’t know much about william f. buckley, but my impression has always been that he's a laissez faire kind of guy. his rant on high corporate salaries confuses this understanding:

That money was taken, directly, from company shareholders. But the loss, viewed on a larger scale, is a loss to the community of people who believe in the capitalist free-market system. Because extortions of that size tell us, really, that the market system is not working in respect of executive remuneration. What is going on is phony. It is shoddy, it is contemptible, and it is philosophically blasphemous.

buckley’s concerns are common, and understandably so for those unconvinced that market mechanisms shake out efficiently. admittedly, the situation is complicated and may involve government sneakery. however, in essence he’s probably right - not linking executive compensation to company performance seems like a bad idea. practices such as market-based management are likely much better. however, as with most theories, we can’t be certain.

on the assumption that there is actually one right way to structure executive compensation, it seems that evolution is the best way to give us an answer. if rewarding on a performance basis actually improved performance, companies with such a policy would outlast (or at least outperform) less wisely run enterprises.

buckley says that any losses due to the prevalent system are a “loss to the community of people who believe in the capitalist free-market system,” and goes on to say that clearly, here, the market system is not working. this is where he’s wrong. failure means the market is working. it's is a vital market signal that tells us what doesn’t work, something we can only know experientially via this evolutionary process. the information contained within failure will prevent others from making the same mistakes, improve business practice, and - i believe - ameliorate the problem he decries.

Labels: economics, ideology

prompted by will’s post (ages ago, in blogtime- but hey, i've been in the dark for a while!) and those requisite Christmastime political arguments, i must agree that libertarians tend to be a happier. indeed, research may bear this out in some ways. keeping in mind that life is unfair, and unequal – if not inherently, at least we can agree it is at present so:

MacCulloch (2000) reported that … in the United States only liberals are made less happy by inequality. Thus, the effects of societal characteristics depend to some extent on the ideological views of respondents.
(Deiner, E. and Seligman, M. “Beyond Money: Towards an Economy of Well-Being” Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2004)

the belief that trade is positive sum, which libertarians tend to have, alleviates a great deal of guilt (as some of will's commenters noted), while participation in free trade creates unhappiness and dissonance among liberals. and then there's the whole belief that consumerism is the great evil consuming our souls.

the liberal (and indeed, the conservative) point of view on human nature states that if left to our own devices, society would devolve into a dirty, violent, chaos devoid of good will or prosperity. we’d all lop off each other’s heads, force our youngins to sew wallets 17 hours a day, and worse still – we’d all smoke crack. and we certainly would not send our children to school (they're too busy with the wallets). what an awful thing to think about your species. it would make me cranky too.

i can go all day without encountering aggravating things - having to pay taxes or read about politics, for example. these are activities i go out of my way for. the things that make liberals unhappy are all around - rampant consumerism, inequality, trade, etc. etc...

let's forget about all these anti-povery policies. if we’re all truly concerned with well-being as the ultimate goal (which, granted, not everyone is), if we see gross national happiness as a greater meter than gross national product, we should all be libertarians. now, who’s gonna tell king wangchuck?

Labels: ideology, well being

the global language monitor cites the term "progressive" used to replace "classical liberal" as number six on its top ten politically correct words and phrases of the year. is this a typo? do they mean modern liberal? i'm confused...

Labels: ideology

we can come up with a million reasons why bush won. his win came as a shock to many, esp. as fervent as the opposition was. the democrats really did try every trick in the book, and with good reason: the stakes were high, and they foresaw the impending apocalypse with bush’s reelection. in traveling to several cities, i saw hundreds of kerry and dnc folks on street corners. celebrities told us we’d die if we didn’t vote [for kerry]. documentary filmmakers crafted propaganda films to sway. a record amount was spent on campaigning. although it’s purely anecdotal, i for one didn’t see this push from the conservative side.

how could have all of this money – and not just money, but honest, grassroots effort - fail? reasons abound, including that bush’s expenditures were also significant, and comprable. the polity typically favors the incumbent. it could be as simple (and unbelievable) as: the american people just preferred his policies, esp. his appeal to morality.

i’d say the campaigning method liberals used may have had some small effect as well. earlier i linked to this article:

The weakness of persuasive messages is they tend to give incomplete information…. [W]hen people realize the facts have been tweaked, they may end up distrusting all the information provided.

the general phenomenon may be the same here. celebrity chants and filmmakers spin could have made americans more skeptical of the liberal message, producing the exact opposite affect they desired. although it rallied the core liberal constituency and made some leaning democrat lean more heavily, it also may have turned off many slightly sympathetic to bush or even some who liked neither (such as myself). i doubt if the phenomenon is powerful enough to have to turned the polity off to the democratic message altogether, but instead of convincing the undecided of bush’s evils, it put them on their guard about the liberal messenger.

also, liberal efforts may have convinced them that bush was a bad choice, but they did little to convince us that kerry was a good one. and, when unsure, many people tend to stick with the default, the incumbent.

so, in summary: don’t ask p. diddy to campaign for you, and if you tell us one person is bad, at least give us a viable alternative.

update: speaking of p. diddy, nice shirt! (thanks for the tip, mark!)

Labels: ideology

scientists are researching the brain scan differences between republicans and democrats, and they've found some interesting differences.

[S]ome differences appeared between the brain activity of Democrats and Republicans. Take empathy: One Democrat's brain lit up at an image of Kerry "with a profound sense of connection, like a beautiful sunset," Freedman said. Brain activity in a Republican shown an image of Bush was "more interpersonal, such as if you smiled at someone and they smiled back."

And when voters were shown a Bush ad that included images of the Sept. 11 attacks, the amygdala region of the brain — which lights up for most of us when we see snakes — illuminated more for Democrats than Republicans. The researchers' conclusion: At a subconscious level, Republicans were apparently not as bothered by what Democrats found alarming.

that doesn't seem quite fair. democrats may be more empathetic, but that republicans' amygdalas, the center for emotional fear, didn't react when watching clips about 9/11 as dems did doesn't imply that they aren't upset by what they see. republicans may feel more disgust or anger, not thought to be found in the amygdala.

Labels: ideology, neuroscience, political

i subscribe to vegetarian times magazine. although it's annoying at times, (it would probably award a "stick" to the great org. nature conservancy), it has tasty recipes, great vegetarian advice, and interesting herbal remedies (that actually sometimes work!). all their recipes call for organic, pesticide-free foods, which i take great pleasure in substituting for cheap, genetically-modified foods.

this month they have an article on "smart breeding," which smells all too similar to a low-tech version of genetic engineering (which the magazine calls "scary"). "smart breeding" is a complicated and seemingly-slow process: by cross-breeding, genes are transferred from one plant to another, making it "taste better... more resistant to disease and harsh weather... more nutritious." it seems that this is one very, very small - or non-existent - step from GMO foods.

the technique is much less "scary." one scientist says "sometimes all I need to do is place two beets in a cage and smack the side with a stick."

although it sounds primitive, they do use some genetics. by examining the DNA strand, they find out "which plants to mate so they produce... whatever trait we want to encourage." so, this is anaolgous to genetic engineering. but, for heaven's sake, don't do it in a lab!

and if you aren't convinced that it's tampering with nature just as much as GMO, listen to this:

He actually figured out how to switch off one gene, making the beet gold. Switching genes on and off, he bred a striped beet with a bull's-eye appearance.

okay, now they're just showing off.

the article emphasizes how crucial this new technique could be for less developed countries (LDCs), as it can produce higher-yield plants. however, the article notes that "few smart-bred crops are available" now. so, let's let the folks starve a little longer until there's a less "scary" way to grow food (now most LDCs are pressured to refuse GMO crops, and cannot use many good pesticides and fertilizers).

*i was unsuccessful in locating the "beet generation" article by don baker on the vegetarian times website. it's in the nov/dec 04 issue.*

update: found the article while searching for something else!

Labels: ideology, misc. science

according to my workplace's, ihs's, politopia political quiz, it turns out that authoritarians will be voting for kerry, as will liberals, and those in-between liberal and authoritarian. even centrists will be voting for kerry, as will those between libertarian and liberal. i'm willing to bet that those turning up as liberal, conservative, or authoritarian will tend to vote more often than the rest, as being authoritarian means following the rules, being obedient, etc, and likely also means playing your part in the system, whatever system that is, and doing whatever society tells you is best to do - for example, voting. so, i'm predicting that kerry will win, because the authoritarians will likely come out in higher numbers than those voting for bush (only the conservatives, libertarians, and those between authoritarian and conservative).
granted, this is not a scientific quiz, but it has got some recent press, bringing it to a wider subset of people.

Labels: ideology

a test at harvard's "project implicit" website allows you to detect your burning, latent, -ist (ageist, sexist, racist, etc) attitudes . tolerance.org says about the test:

Studies show people can be consciously committed to egalitarianism, and deliberately work to behave without prejudice, yet still possess hidden negative prejudices or stereotypes.

excuse me, is egalitarianism not a bias? not to tolerance.org, i suppose - but anyway...
there are hidden bias tests for gender, race, weight, age, and more. i took the gender test, which tested how much one associates males with science or females with the humanities. turns out, i'm the reverse of the stereotype. my result came back as:

Your data suggest a moderate association between science and Female relative to Male

this means i responded faster when associating female and science words than when associating males with science words. i suppose this makes some sense because i studied science in college (ah, organic chemistry, how i made sweet love to you!), and am a female, and that most of my classes were at least half female. of all respondents online, the site indicates that 47% show a moderate to strong bias in the opposite direction - strongly associating males with science. forty-eight percent, however, showed a slight bias or none at all, which is exciting news.
but my results are peculiar. all my societal cues would point otherwise as a child. my father was an engineer and my mother stayed home until i was in junior high. they raised me in a traditional rural area and went to a socially conservative university. i was subjected to the same media and societal pressures and influences as everyone else. however, my results are the opposite of what one would expect, likely because my direct experience with the question at hand pointed otherwise. amazing, the human mind...

Labels: ideology, misc. psych

the wsj writes that although oprah's car give-away was well-intentioned, it may wind up costing recipients around between $6,000 and $12,000 in extra taxes this year, and:

"even if Pontiac were to pay not only the sales tax but all the various income taxes that the recipients will owe on the value of their new cars, there would be taxes due on the value of any 'free' tax payments too, a calculation known as a gross up."

although oprah's liberal views would, under normal circumstances, likely fall in favor of the gift tax, in this case she probably laments the unfairness of the situation... but alas, we can't have it both ways.

Labels: ideology

the standard stereotype of the "bleeding heart liberal" is unfounded according to a new study. in a classic experimental economics game participants could contribute any or all of $10 to a public pot. money in the pot would be increased by the researchers and then distributed evenly between all players regardless of the amount each contributed. individual players were best off if they kept their $10 and if everyone else contributed the full amount.
the results? liberals and conservatives were equally matched in their self-serving behavior and disregard for the common good. as the researchers conclude, something else must account for policy differences – but what is it? perhaps we all have the same basic self-serving instincts, but when it comes to ideas about what others should do we diverge.

Labels: ideology

I don't want to go on and on about this movie. Seeing it was enough of a waste of my time. Just to say: rarely have i been so disappointed. Illogically (Moore's not known to be bright) i expected well thought out, substantiated criticisms, many of which i would agree with. Instead i saw trite, silly, liberal platitudes. I'm not sure if he could have been more insulting to saudi arabians, black america, soldiers, or his general audience. As the saying goes, i feel dumber for having seen it. Bush could have been slammed well, but maybe you need an IQ higher than his to do it.

Labels: ideology

conservatives believe in the market, but it seems they get a bit uneasy when it comes to the market of ideas. why is a market for goods any different than a market for thoughts and ideas? i guess i'm thinking of the huge deal conservatives make about the liberal slant of most academic fields (save a few such as economics and math). one possible reason is that liberal ideas are inherently more appealing. another reason could be that just like boot cut jeans, liberal ideas happen to be in fashion at the moment. this doesn't seem right to me, though, as many students are very conservative.

or, could it that the marketplace of ideas isn't the cause of such a liberal academy. is it a liberal "old boys club" that keeps conservatives out? should we have affirmative action for conservatives?

but seriously, there are many valuable ideas that conservatives and libertarians can contribute to discussions, and it's a shame that they're often overlooked and often disregarded out-of-hand.

Labels: ideology

does more thought and study on the political tend to make people more liberal? some evidence seems to point in that direction. there's a recognized positive correlation between level of educaton and the degree of "liberalness". now, to top it all off, there's a new book out about an experiment (Deliberation Day, Yale U. Press) where students were paid to think and read about politics and "society", and generally turned out to be more liberal (in the modern sense, an advocate of government action) than before.

could it be that the materials they were given to deliberate on were just skewed? The WSJ thinks maybe so...

it does seem that something else is going on here, because there are obviously non-liberal academics and others with higher educations (i hesitate using "conservative" because non-liberals can be libertarians, anarchists, or a host of other things). is it that these folks are just dense? what happened to them?

Labels: ideology

wsj's opinion journal talks about protectionism, blaming democrats for protectionist policies. the wsj opinion page usually blames democrats, so that's no surprise. i've got to give them some credit, though, for mentioning the bush steel tariffs - that must have been a difficult step for them. because protectionism comes from both sides, that's just the nature of the beast.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that amercan democracy encourages most politicians to be protectinists. the public's (understandable) attitude of "what are you going to do for ME?" forces them to be that way, and those that say "well, actually, tariffs and subsidies are bad for the economy in the long run" die out - a kind of natural selection that leaves only unfit policies...

so is there a solution? are we destined to replay our follies because of citizens' ignorance of economics and history?

Labels: ideology, political