A meta-analysis culled from 88
samples in 12 countries, and with an N of 22,818, revealed that
“several psychological variables predicted political conservatism.” Which variables exactly? In order of predictive power:

Death
anxiety - What? Are you kidding? Most of the Right has ZERO death anxiety, while the left are obsessive about technological life-extension with little care given to quality.

system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order,
structure, and closure - This is why the Left wants to place unity, highly specific and ordered government programs, and government control to address every issue of life, while the Right ...

A meta-analysis culled from 88
samples in 12 countries, and with an N of 22,818, revealed that
“several psychological variables predicted political conservatism.” Which variables exactly? In order of predictive power:

Death
anxiety - What? Are you kidding? Most of the Right has ZERO death anxiety, while the left are obsessive about technological life-extension with little care given to quality.

system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order,
structure, and closure - This is why the Left wants to place unity, highly specific and ordered government programs, and government control to address every issue of life, while the Right stresses the importance of a symphony of individuals acting in accord with their own dreams, pursuit of happiness, and care for others.


closed-mindedness - There is no such thing as tolerance. The object of intolerance is just different for everyone.

high needs for order - This must be why the Right in America shuns unity and Federal order, while the Left make it a religion.resistance to change and a justification of inequality.”

“the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and a justification of inequality - How can this possibly be the case when every advance and practically every political first happened because of Conservatives. I don't expect you to know American history, but this is quite obvious.

Liberalism does indeed rely on psychological deficiency. It makes victims to be able to breath.

@abailart, if the assertion in the clip can be made, and clearly done so by a liberal - two things become clear: 1) the person making the assertion has no clue about conservatives, since it's completely off as willhelm astutely pointed out and he should know, since he is one and 2) considering the above - your first comment becomes a fact, because only a mental illness can (does) explain anyone making such assertions.

Luckily - there's a simple solution. If one wants to make comments about conservatism - one simply needs to become one, then actually have some real understanding and make comments on the subject. Of course the side-effect of that would be that this kind of comment wouldn't ...

@abailart, if the assertion in the clip can be made, and clearly done so by a liberal - two things become clear: 1) the person making the assertion has no clue about conservatives, since it's completely off as willhelm astutely pointed out and he should know, since he is one and 2) considering the above - your first comment becomes a fact, because only a mental illness can (does) explain anyone making such assertions.

Luckily - there's a simple solution. If one wants to make comments about conservatism - one simply needs to become one, then actually have some real understanding and make comments on the subject. Of course the side-effect of that would be that this kind of comment wouldn't be made then. But at least the disorder will no longer be there, so there's some positive there...

There is substantial, reliable evidence on the psychology of both liberalism and conservatism. My senior thesis found interesting results on this front. I gave 60 research subjects a political test. Then I asked them to take a moral development test by James Rest (the DIT). Next, I asked the students to take the moral development test as though they were someone from the opposite political persuasion. Guess what happened? The liberals scored higher than conservatives on the moral development test the FIRST time they took it (as themselves). The liberals lowered their score the second time they took it when they were supposed to be thinking like a conservative. Now, not only did the conservat...

There is substantial, reliable evidence on the psychology of both liberalism and conservatism. My senior thesis found interesting results on this front. I gave 60 research subjects a political test. Then I asked them to take a moral development test by James Rest (the DIT). Next, I asked the students to take the moral development test as though they were someone from the opposite political persuasion. Guess what happened? The liberals scored higher than conservatives on the moral development test the FIRST time they took it (as themselves). The liberals lowered their score the second time they took it when they were supposed to be thinking like a conservative. Now, not only did the conservatives score lower on the moral development test to begin with, they were unable to even change, let alone improve, their scores when they took the moral development test the SECOND time. I'm interested in your interpretation, abailart.

Whew! Well I can't begin to be precise. Clearly I would need access to your paper, design and own interpretations etc. I assume the studies you did were replications of many similar DIT scenarios, or at least in the same family. That broader context has, as you will know, been subject to ongoing argument and debate but I'm no social scientist so don't really have more than a rough knowledge of these. My own views (above) centre around the methodology of the paper clipped, the extremely narrow conceptualisation of ideology, and the generalised reduction of moral being to dimensions characterised by on the one hand content-free cognition (the ghost of disembodied 'reason'), and on the other h...

Whew! Well I can't begin to be precise. Clearly I would need access to your paper, design and own interpretations etc. I assume the studies you did were replications of many similar DIT scenarios, or at least in the same family. That broader context has, as you will know, been subject to ongoing argument and debate but I'm no social scientist so don't really have more than a rough knowledge of these. My own views (above) centre around the methodology of the paper clipped, the extremely narrow conceptualisation of ideology, and the generalised reduction of moral being to dimensions characterised by on the one hand content-free cognition (the ghost of disembodied 'reason'), and on the other hand psychological motivation. That latter reductionism seems to me to be deeply flawed, and to imply either a wilful (motivated) neglect of the philosophical complexity or morality or logically ('cognitively' if you like) preposterous. I certainly concur with the thrust of the clip to a pre-political psychologically and existentially motivated gamut of beliefs but these are shared, as the paper itself reminds us in its primary conclusiion, across the board - not only to political allegiances either. In the end, my guess is that the moral positioning of 'liberals' is, tautologically, equivalent to the core values of liberalism.