Baby whiners grow up to be conservatives

[purplesnowlion]

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn’t going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.

…

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. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

…

“I found it to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best,” he said of the Block study. He thinks insecure, defensive, rigid people can as easily gravitate to left-wing ideologies as right-wing ones. He suspects that in Communist China, those kinds of people would likely become fervid party members.

The results do raise some obvious questions. Are nursery school teachers in the conservative heartland cursed with classes filled with little proto-conservative whiners?

…

Part of the answer is that personality is not the only factor that determines political leanings. For instance, there was a .27 correlation between being self-reliant in nursery school and being a liberal as an adult. Another way of saying it is that self-reliance predicts statistically about 7 per cent of the variance between kids who became liberal and those who became conservative. (If every self-reliant kid became a liberal and none became conservatives, it would predict 100 per cent of the variance). Seven per cent is fairly strong for social science, but it still leaves an awful lot of room for other influences, such as friends, family, education, personal experience and plain old intellect.

I saw this article and then realized I just had to post it up here. It is interested how reactionaries and intolerant people are really the whiners amongst us while the heroic little ones turn out to be open-minded freethinkers. I loved the part that proves that Chinese government is full of whining losers. Remember Communist China is not a real communist country, but a fascist one!!!

[Chris]

Liberals believe that most people are basically trustworthy, honest, decent, peaceful, helpful, kind, fair and generous, because they believe other people are just like them.

Conservatives believe that most people are basically backstabbing, selfish, hateful, dishonest, war-like, exploitative, deceitful and greedy, because they believe other people are just like them.

[Comrade_Stalin]

Political beliefs from the back of a Wheaties box.

Wonderful.

[bababa]

@?

He thinks insecure, defensive, rigid people can as easily gravitate to left-wing ideologies as right-wing ones. He suspects that in Communist China, those kinds of people would likely become fervid party members.

When I lived in China (I taught at a university in Sichuan) I found the contrary: the bright, outgoing, seemingly best-adjusted of my students were the ones who joined or wanted to join the Party. They were ambitious and saw it as a way to get ahead.

[mr_boogie]

well, maybe the only way to get ahead in China is to join the party…

[JMcNeill]

Wow, there’s a news flash. A UC berkeley professor saying that all conservatives started as whiny insecure kids.
There can’t possibly be any bias in this study, can there.

What a load of crap!

[h22chen]

Link please.

Thank you.

[Mother_Theresa]

I haven’t read how the study was performed, so I can’t judge how credible it is (I doubt that any of the above critics have either), but the following doesn’t seem so outrageous does it:

He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial.

On the other hand, the following explanation does not seem improbable, either:

[quote]The results do raise some obvious questions. Are nursery school teachers in the conservative heartland cursed with classes filled with little proto-conservative whiners?

Or does an insecure little boy raised in Idaho or Alberta surrounded by conservatives turn instead to liberalism? [/quote]

Incidentally, it’s unfair to criticize the results as incorrect because the study was performed by a Berkeley prof. Similar results came from a prior study performed at conservative Stanford U.

Similar work by John T. Jost of Stanford and colleagues in 2003 drew a political backlash. The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the psychology of conservatism, and concluded that people who are dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to conservatism

As for a link to the study, I haven’t seen that, but lots of blogs, editorials and op-ed pieces are referring to the study. See:

google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& … tnG=Search

[Toe_Tag]

[quote=“Comrade Stalin”]Political beliefs from the back of a Wheaties box.

Wonderful. [/quote]

Whiner.

[the_chief]

[quote=“Comrade Stalin”]Political beliefs from the back of a Wheaties box.

Wonderful. [/quote]

And off he goes, running to tell the teacher…

[JMcNeill]

@Mother Theresa

Incidentally, it’s unfair to criticize the results as incorrect because the study was performed by a Berkeley prof. Similar results came from a prior study performed at conservative Stanford U.

And now, form the Stanford Daily Online Edition:

[quote]Members of the faculty and administration acknowledged that many Stanford employees tend to be politically liberal, consistent with the center

[jdsmith]

[quote=“Chris”]Liberals believe that most people are basically trustworthy, honest, decent, peaceful, helpful, kind, fair and generous, because they believe other people are just like them.

Conservatives believe that most people are basically backstabbing, selfish, hateful, dishonest, war-like, exploitative, deceitful and greedy, because they believe other people are just like them.[/quote]

hammer
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but it was fun to read.

Just for fun, how many soldiers and civilians has GWBush killed? How many did JFK and LBJ kill? War like? You betcha!

[TheGingerMan]

“The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.” LENNY BRUCE

“Conservative, n. A stateman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.” AMBROSE BIERCE