The links between personality & politics

[groovedaddy]

Across the Great Divide: Investigating Links Between Personality and Politics
NY Times - Monday - Feb. 12, 2007
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What seem to be ordinary, everyday objects to some people can carry a storehouse of information about the owner’s ideology, says a new wave of social scientists who are studying the subtle links between personality and politics.

Research into why someone leans left or right — a subject that stirred enormous interest in the aftermath of World War II before waning in the 1960s — has been revived in recent years, partly because of a shift in federal funds for politics and terrorism research, new technology like brain imaging and a sharper partisan divide in the nation’s political culture.

“I believe that recent developments in psychological research and the world of politics — including responses to 9/11, the Bush presidency, the Iraq War, polarizing Supreme Court nominations, Hurricane Katrina, and ongoing controversies over scientific and environmental policies — provide ample grounds for revisiting” the psychological basis of Americans’ opinions, party and voting patterns, John T. Jost, a psychologist...
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/arts/12part.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

[havocmom]

1. . (mark for later)

when I have the time it deserves

[InvisibleTouch]

2. Oh, so THAT'S why my home is messy!

Cool. I've got an excuse. :)

[ninkasi]

3. Me too

Here in my computer room, I have books, a TV, CDs, craft supplies all over the place, magazines, clipped out articles, candles on every surface, and lots of art on the walls. I won't describe the spare bedroom, since the majority of my craft supplies are in there. Then, in the living room, I try to confine my clutter to a chair I sit in the the surrounding space to the craft items I'm working on at any given time. I usually have several going at once.

It's funny, but both of my parents were very conservative, and out of their five children, only one, my youngest brother could be described as conservative. The rest of us have all been very liberal. Two of my children are liberal, one is a little on the conservative side, but not on all issues. I've always found hardcore conservative to be pretty mean, and very lacking in empathy for others.

[not_a_robot]

4. This says it all.

Mr. Haidt, who agrees liberals and conservatives have distinct dispositions, still thinks bias is a problem: “Our own biases as researchers — because we are almost all liberal — make it difficult for us to understand the psychology of conservatives.”

I think it's time for people to stop pretending social conservatives have some valid role in the world by their very nature. Stop trying to keep from offending them and be direct about it. Delusion is not dealt with by avoiding it's discussion.