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July 25, 2003

Conservative Psychology

There's a new study of the psychology behind political conservatism. A quick summary:

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

It's all very interesting, but really not that earth-shattering. The full study is here (pdf).

This link comes via damnum absque injuria, which also points to comments on the study from The Angry Clam and Instapundit; in fact, you could probably spend all day following links around the right wing of the blogosphere on this study—they don't like it much, it seems. DAI also quotes President Clinton's remarks on the Bush yellowcake/SOTU imbroglio, which Clinton made the other night on Larry King when he was being interviewed about Bob Dole's b-day. Bloggers on the right are also having a field day with this because Clinton
basically said everybody makes mistakes so we can't really hold this against Yubbledew. And he'd probably be right if the Republicans hadn't spent the entire eight years of his own Presidency trying to impeach him for much smaller "mistakes"—like, um, "mistakes" that didn't lead to the deaths of thousands of people. For the record, Clinton also said:

I guess I sound like a card-carrying Republican tonight.

And that's true, which is why it's hard to take seriously the "centrists" at the DNC and the DLC who counseled Democratic candidates to be "Bush-lite," thereby making Democrats big losers in the 2002 election round.

And that's about all I'm going to say about that.

UPDATE: More thoughts on the conservative psychology study at The Yin Blog.

Posted July 25, 2003 06:51 AM | general politics


"And that's true, which is why it's hard to take seriously the "centrists" at the DNC and the DLC who counseled Democratic candidates to be "Bush-lite," thereby making Democrats big losers in the 2002 election round."

Boy, oh boy. As a Republican, I can only hope and pray that enough Democrats are foolish enough to take your advice and keep pushing this BushLied (TM) meme as far as it will go. Maybe the Donks should get back to their roots, and take up the winning strategies of George McGovern, who never once tried to be Nixon-lite. Then there are those all-time winners, Carter and Mondale, who no one would ever accuse of having masqueraded as Reagan-lite. Last and least, there's Michael Dukakis. He certainly made his share of campaigning errors, but coming off as "Bush-lite" was definitely not among them.

Add these up, and the conclusion is obvious: Howard Dean for President! Pretty please?

Posted by: Xrlq at July 25, 2003 01:59 PM

Here's hoping you get your wish!

Posted by: ambimb at July 26, 2003 03:37 PM

hey...this isn't really a comment to this, but I thought I would let you know left coast expat is coming back...not much there as of right now, but it will be going again in the next couple days, so check it out.

Posted by: matt at July 29, 2003 01:05 AM

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