Why Won't They Listen? Haidt diverges from other psychologists who have analyzed the left’s electoral failures. The usual argument of these psycho-pundits is that conservative politicians manipulate voters’ neural roots — playing on our craving for authority, for example — to trick people into voting against their interests. But Haidt treats electoral success as a kind of evolutionary fitness test. He figures that if voters like Republican messages, there’s something in Republican messages worth liking. He chides psychologists who try to “explain away” conservatism, treating it as a pathology. Conservatism thrives because it fits how people think, and that’s what validates it. Workers who vote Republican aren’t fools. In Haidt’s words, they’re “voting for their moral interests.”
posted by shivohum
on Mar 26, 2012 -
53 comments
Some Social Scientists Claim Pervasive Bias in the Academe Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”
posted by modernnomad
on Feb 9, 2011 -
180 comments
You can tell if a person is liberal or conservative by how a person responds to your "
gaze cues". Look away at something while you're talking and a liberal will tend to look at it, too. Conservatives are "completely immune" to this effect.
[more inside]
posted by MuadDib
on Dec 9, 2010 -
94 comments
“There’s a tremendous amount of anxiety among religious traditionalists that when you take one step toward egalitarianism, the floodgates are open and everything that seemed self-evident will no longer be. Men go to work, and women raise children. If you undermine that, you have lost your whole universe.”The Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements of Judaism have been ordaining women as rabbis for decades, but the religion's most traditional sect, the Orthodox, remains a lone, minority holdout against egalitarianism. Last year, Orthodox Rabbi Avraham "Avi" Weiss (political
activist and founder of the
controversial, liberal, "Open Orthodox"
Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Yeshiva in New York)
tried to shake things up by ordaining the first female American Orthodox rabbi.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jul 31, 2010 -
35 comments
The
rumours are increasing that there will be a merger between the two left-leaning political parties in Canada, the hapless Liberals under the wooden Michael Ignatieff, and the perennial almost-show New Democrats under the magnificently
mustached Jack Layton. Denials all 'round, of course, but as separate parties they have not managed to take down Stephen Harper and his wiley Conservatives.
posted by anothermug
on Jun 8, 2010 -
117 comments
Intense debate about weighty issues like racism, abortion, and immigration... between animals in funny hats! This is the silly punditry of
Scenario: Dog v. Cat:
Round 1,
round 2,
round 3.
posted by hjo3
on May 28, 2008 -
7 comments
Are Liberals and Conservatives Different Species? Get this: Everyone in our sample was an American, a teenager, and belonged to the same major religious tradition of Protestantism. In these respects they were culturally uniform. But some belonged to conservative denominations such as Pentecostal and others to liberal denominations such as Episcopalian. As Ingrid combed through the
data, which involved tedious hours in front of the computer, the differences that began to emerge were astounding. It was as if these conservative and liberal religious youth were--different species. [via
3quarksdaily]
[more inside]
posted by sisquoc15
on Feb 29, 2008 -
86 comments
In an experiment reported in the journal
Nature Neuroscience, scientists at NYU and UCLA demonstrate that political orientation is related to basic differences in cognition - how the brain processes information. Psychological studies in the past found conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments while liberals are more "open to new experiences." The latest study finds these traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.
[more inside]
posted by uaudio
on Sep 11, 2007 -
57 comments
My Right Wing Dad is a new-ish and rather informal blog that aims to provide "a chance for folks to examine the unrestrained rhetoric that is quietly passed from in-box to in-box in America," by hosting a collection of the emails that form an often untraceable and unacknowledged part of public discourse in the U.S., especially on the Right. Tagged by category (for example:
God,
college,
flag,
liberal, and
World War II), the amateur archive presents a range of colorful opinion, not all of it strikingly accurate, and some of it offensive. In efforts to understand
liberal and conservative habits of communication, it may be worth considering the role of forwarded email in the electoral process, and the
reasons that the forwarding of email is popular among some people, and whether this behavior tends to correlate with particular political opinions. The emails hosted on MyRightWingDad may in any case be enlightening, unless you're already on the forward list of someone in the know.
posted by washburn
on Aug 15, 2007 -
105 comments
Things we already knew: Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. ... A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity. The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests.
posted by caddis
on Mar 22, 2006 -
29 comments
Conservative Blogs Rock! NEW YORK In an argument sure to be challenged in certain sectors of the blogosphere, a story in The New York Times magazine coming up this Sunday declares that conservative blogs continue to best liberal blogs in political and electoral influence.
posted by Sagres
on Dec 9, 2005 -
51 comments
Forget Fiction And Non-Fiction, Bud: Is The Book Liberal Or Conservative? The
National Review's bestseller list (
scroll down and click) is starkly divided into "Conservative Bestsellers" and "Liberal Bestsellers". Is this a quirky innovation and deliberate provocation or just plain stupid and sad? Does such a dichotomy in fact exist? How would the literature of the world fit into such a classification? (
This isn't the end of the world as we know it, is it?)
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Apr 14, 2004 -
50 comments
"Whatever else is going on, the liberal-left alliance has taken as big a hit as the conservative-fundamentalist alliance after the blame-America remarks of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson ... It may be [...] that the far left's bluff has been finally called ... For the first time in a very long while, many liberals are reassessing--quietly for the most part--their alliance with the anti-American, anticapitalist forces they have long appeased, ignored or supported."
Andrew Sullivan in Thursday's Opinion Journal. Strong piece, but is he correct? I've seen a few people reassessing here and there, but not a lot, at least not yet.
posted by aaron
on Oct 3, 2001 -
25 comments
