MetaFilter posts tagged with psychology and Politics

Conservatives are scaredy-cats

XMLicious — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:06:31 -0800

The Politics of Fear: Some Political Views May be Related to Physiology video, audio news stories - BBC, Washington Post, NPR with audio Plus, a 2006 lecture on the heritability of political attitudes by John Hibbing, one of the authors of the above study - flash video or MPEG4 download, starts at around 10:00 and runs for about an hour (during the intro btw he quips "I'm a social scientist pretending to be a scientist...")

Negating a frame activates that frame

homunculus — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:46:05 -0800

Don't Think of a Maverick! George Lakoff offers some tips on framing to the Obama campaign.

Niccolo Machiavelli

homunculus — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:35:04 -0800

The Florentine. Niccolò Machiavelli, the man who taught rulers how to rule.

The Saddam Sessions

kliuless — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:33:50 -0800

Saddam's Confessions - Given Saddam Hussein's central place in the American Consciousness over the last couple decades and particularly in recent years, I found 60 minutes' interview with FBI interrogator George Piro pretty fascinating.

Myth-busters have the odds against them

homunculus — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:30:38 -0800

Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach. "The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies (PDFs) show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths." [Via Firedoglake, more at MindHacks.]

Death Grip

homunculus — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:45:30 -0800

Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success. Interesting article on the work of psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski. [Via Disinformation.]

Follow the links!

daksya — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 18:13:10 -0800

The Authoritarians - Robert Altemeyer's book on authoritarianism is freely available online [via]

The Ideological Animal

gottabefunky — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 09:55:01 -0800

The Ideological Animal. We think our political stance is the product of reason, but we're easily manipulated and surprisingly malleable. Our essential political self is more a stew of childhood temperament, education, and fear of death. Call it the 9/11 effect. Or the Metafilter effect. [ducks]

ragnarok now? or is it all just in your head?

all-seeing eye dog — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 09:46:51 -0800

Why do we always seem to expect the worst from some people? By now, it's common knowledge that media reports of widespread looting, violence and sexual assault in the wake of Katrina's strike on New Orleans were grossly exaggerated, but why? Some might attribute such distortions to unconscious bias, offering up some hope of alleviating racial tension by bringing unexamined racial biases to light; still others see the problem of racial tension as an intractable one, leading inevitably to an all-out clash of cultures--even finding "evidence" of the inevitably of such a conflict in the unlikeliest of places. Still others seem especially eager to bring all these tensions to a head. What's really going on these days? Is racial tension ultimately a political problem or, as some suggest, a psychological one?

Natural Born Liars

all-seeing eye dog — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 18:58:20 -0800

If natural born leaders are also natural born liars, can we really hold it against them when they do what comes naturally? Maybe instead of dwelling on it, we just need a little more sanity in our lives. Or are we better off deluding ourselves?

Conservatism: resistance to change, simplistic black and white ethics, and the acceptance of inequality

skallas — Sun, 27 Jul 2003 19:07:06 -0800

Conservatism: resistance to change, simplistic black and white ethics, and the acceptance of inequality. In what's sure to be considered a controversial paper by many, Berkeley psychologists analyze conservatives to see what makes them tick. The criticisms have already begun. [official press release here]

Frontier Psychology

Argyle — Wed, 30 Apr 2003 10:45:02 -0800

Frontier Psychology - Does Frontier Psychology drive America in a direction that the rest of the world cannot comprehend? Roughly defined as "the effort on the part of Americans to come to grips with untamed elements of nature and, by taming them, to reorganize their society" We see it everywhere, even in Buffy. Europe appears to value stability over mobility and change, in opposition to America. Prof. Richard Slotkin has written extensively about these concepts. An interiew with audio clips is here. (Real)
Are America's recent domestic and international policy decisions attempts to tame "untamed elements" around it?