http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:
Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management
.....
The avoidance of uncertainty, for example, as well as the striving for certainty, are particularly tied to one key dimension of conservative thought - the resistance to change or hanging onto the status quo, they said.

The terror management feature of conservatism can be seen in post-Sept. 11 America, where many people appear to shun and even punish outsiders and those who threaten the status of cherished world views, they wrote.

Concerns with fear and threat, likewise, can be linked to a second key dimension of conservatism - an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the Indian caste system, South African apartheid and the conservative, segregationist politics of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South S.C.).
.....
Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way.

This research marks the first synthesis of a vast amount of information about conservatism, and the result is an "elegant and unifying explanation" for political conservatism under the rubric of motivated social cognition, said Sulloway. That entails the tendency of people's attitudinal preferences on policy matters to be explained by individual needs based on personality, social interests or existential needs.

The researchers' analytical methods allowed them to determine the effects for each class of factors and revealed "more pluralistic and nuanced understanding of the source of conservatism," Sulloway said.

While most people resist change, Glaser said, liberals appear to have a higher tolerance for change than conservatives do.

You hardly see this sort of thing regarding conservatives. Conservatism generally has a positive connotaion and liberal a negative one, at least in the US. The thing is if you read the average person a definition of conservative and liberal, which, respectively mean, oppostion to, and openess to change most people would describe themselves as the latter.
I think these researchers have some good points.

"Libral" is usually tied with "Hippie Socialist Fruitcake" and it has been a curseword in politics for many decades.

I'm off in search of the APA report. Anyone who finds it earns my personal thanks.

But it really does seem too easy. I just emailed the article link to some friends with the title, "Things we already suspected". Really, to judge by the article, I could have connected those dots.

So I'll wait until I see the APA article. But of course I expect UC Berkeley to be the ones to let us all know.

In the meantime, thanks much ... it's a pretty fun little ideological moment.

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

Edit: The article is not yet online (http://www.apa.org/journals/bul/503tc.html); I figure someone will buy it and put it on their website eventually, but for now .... Okay, I'll look into it.

Originally posted by tiassa

But it really does seem too easy. I just emailed the article link to some friends with the title, "Things we already suspected". Really, to judge by the article, I could have connected those dots.

Yeah, I agree. Nothing ground breaking here. It is nice to see some mainstream anti-conservatism though, and to have these seeming common sense views among the left confirmed by research.

conservative = like keeping your old car because she still drives like a charm

too conservative = like keeping your rusty old car eventhough she drives like sitting backwards on a donkey

liberal = like trading your old car for a another, hopefully better car.

too liberal = like buying the old rusty car from your conservative neighbour

I think the article gets a little too close to oversimplified generalizations.

Not that I have anything to argue with. Conservative/Progressive = Cruel/Kind, Selfish/Altruistic, Greedy/Charitable, Dumb/Smart, Closed/Open, Destructive/Constructive - they all work for me, if we're dealing on that level.

But certain labels aren't as easy to be so sure about. Are the bad guys we're dealing with these days conservatives (usually defined as wanting to maintain the status quo), reactionaries (wanting things the way they used to be in some previous time before the status quo), or radicals (wanting to rip up the status quo and replace it with something different)?

From where lots of us once sat, being a radical was a good thing, being a liberal was being a wimp (a la radical chic), being a conservative was being Archie Bunker, and being a reactionary was fairly rare. Now it could be argued that we're the reactionaries and they're the radicals. So, denotations stay the same, but connotations can shift. The way words are getting so mangled and abused and forced into NewSpeak meanings nowadays, it seems a good time to step back and think about whether the labels we throw around are the right ones now.

And, speaking of labels, I'll take "progressive" over the once (from the Left) and now (from the Right) pejorative "liberal" any day. And it's just ambiguous enough to drive those conservatives into must-have-absolutes mode.

:m: Peace.

I think that, although these labels are often misapplied, those currently labeled as conservatives in our society are really reactionaries and those who are labeled as radicals really are radicals.
The reason for this is that the changes that the conservatives/reactionarys are making are changes that will have the effect of moving us closer and closer to having a true ruling class, which clearly is not a progressive or radical thing to do.

Radicals(meaning anarchists and communists) want to move in the other direction in a way that has never been succesfully done before and to abolish the concept of class.


Although those currently called liberal(democrats) generally could be better labeled as conservatives as they seem essentially to want to keep things the same.

when you're better educated then you tend to be a liberal. When you read more and know more information you can have different stand points on items.

Originally posted by jps
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml



You hardly see this sort of thing regarding conservatives. Conservatism generally has a positive connotaion and liberal a negative one, at least in the US. The thing is if you read the average person a definition of conservative and liberal, which, respectively mean, oppostion to, and openess to change most people would describe themselves as the latter.
I think these researchers have some good points.


Lets not forget where this report came from, UC Berkeley. That isn't exactly the beacon of conservative thought. I do believe that there is some serious slant and imbellisments in this article.

As TXShay85 pointed out, reality is issues and not oversimplifying -isms. Certainly the government presently partially visible in the US is not (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/) conservative by any rational measure. Nor are those who serve as its apologists.

While I liked the article there's absolutely no way in hell that it wasn't a biased endeavor to begin with. You've gotta admit that even too liberal a slant can be bad, just like too conservative a one.

Originally posted by TXShay85
when you're better educated then you tend to be a liberal. When you read more and know more information you can have different stand points on items.

perhaps we can add to that equation the various roles/stages a person goes thru in a lifetime. perhaps one's politics shifts somewhat, say, when one is a teenager, parent or elder??

This article is idiotic.

American conservativism is fundamentally Liberal.

There is no true "conservative" or "traditionalist" party in America.

Unless you count the Libertarian Socialists, or Libertarian National Socialist Greens.

Originally posted by TXShay85
when you're better educated then you tend to be a liberal. When you read more and know more information you can have different stand points on items.

http://www.anus.com/anus/db/unabomber/

"Better educated" - they fed me this same crap when I was at school, and eventually I learned it was bigotry.

I'm no fan of American-style "conservatives" like G.E.W. Bush however - I think they're Liberals who hail a Jewish religion.

hey
you are prozak

Originally posted by spookz
perhaps we can add to that equation the various roles/stages a person goes thru in a lifetime. perhaps one's politics shifts somewhat, say, when one is a teenager, parent or elder??

Very true. Or how much experience one has had with things like cities, governments, other races, etc.