Painful Explanation for Conservative Simplicity

[cwolff]

Ouch. I guess we know why some folks see the world in such simple black and white terms.



Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower
Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice
Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low
Intergroup Contact

Read the study here. (http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Psychological-Science-2012-Hodson-0956797611421206.pdf)

Psychology Today featured psychologists Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri’s findings in its April 22 issue. Hodson and Busseri work at Borck University in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada. They concluded the following:

Lower intelligence in childhood is predictive of greater racism in adulthood, with this effect being mediated (partially explained) through conservative ideology.
and

Poor abstract reasoning skills were related to homophobic attitudes which was mediated through authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact.
and

For those who lack a cognitive ability to grasp complexities of our world, strict-right wing ideologies may be more appealing.” and “people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies. Liberal Media (http://www.liberalamerica.org/2013/11/24/survey-says-low-iq-leads-racism-extreme-conservatism/)

[Taernath]

BUCKLE UP

http://youlookfiiine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/kitty.jpg

[Johnny Five]

Another retarded Cwolff post.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/oi2_ideo_prod/media/210d266b7a6c6ff66a4bb1bafa707675a96a5b2d.jpeg

[Tgo01]

This is silly.

We can say definitively men are taller than women on average but you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller.

Also it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.

[Wrathbringer]

Another retarded Cwolff post.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/oi2_ideo_prod/media/210d266b7a6c6ff66a4bb1bafa707675a96a5b2d.jpeg

He's like a mix of Back and every troll ever banned here.

[Tgo01]

https://s3.amazonaws.com/oi2_ideo_prod/media/210d266b7a6c6ff66a4bb1bafa707675a96a5b2d.jpeg

Waldo sure has changed over the years.

[Jhynnifer]

Waldo sure has changed over the years.

The Curious Case of Waldo Button?

[Warriorbird]

He's just posting the liberal equivalent of all the troll articles that the local conservatives like to post. For my own part I'm more interested in people's personal opinions, but it isn't any different.

[cwolff]

This is silly.

We can say definitively men are taller than women on average but you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller.

Also it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.

You got to admit we've struggled with this black and white vs. shades of gray worldview stuff here on the PC and that made me curious. I've posted to you about this before or at the very least in thread disccusions that you were part of. And we all know that I've posted ad nauseum about Us. vs. Them and Ingroup/Outgroup dynamics. This study addresses some of the root causes for why we have the polarization we have here.

[Tgo01]

You got to admit we've struggled with this black and white vs. shades of gray worldview stuff here on the PC and that made me curious. I've posted to you about this before or at the very least in thread disccusions that you were part of. And we all know that I've posted ad nauseum about Us. vs. Them and Ingroup/Outgroup dynamics. This study addresses some of the root causes for why we have the polarization we have here.

My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it.

A study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naive views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way" might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright.

[Parkbandit]

And just when you thought Backwolff couldn't get any dumber.... he goes and proves it all over again.

Fantastic as always.

[cwolff]

My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it.

A study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naive views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way" might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright.

Did you read the study?

[Keller]

I know it is anecdotal evidence, but this explains Squiggles.

[Whirlin]

The article makes no statements about the current Republican or Democratic parties reflecting the "Conservative Ideology" as defined in the article. Furthermore, the "Conservative Ideology" defined within the paper would only reflect a single aspect of political party affiliation.

[Tisket]

Okay then, let's look at another, more recent Psychology Today study: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201309/liberal-bias-in-social-psychology-personal-experience-i


Liberal Bias in Social Psychology

I began to suspect that my colleagues' politics distorted their science long ago. Not always, but sometimes. A few years ago, I began new work trying to develop a questionnaire to assess people's explicit willingness to sacrifice science to advance political goals. In doing that research, we sought funding from an internal Rutgers source, a great program that provides funding for undergraduate research projects. So, Urvashi, an undergraduate in my lab, proposed a questionnaire to assess how willing people were to sacrifice science to advance their politics.

Urvashi's funding proposal led off with the following paragraph:

The field of psychology is dominated by liberals (Redding, 2001), and this political homogeneity can be problematic . . In fact, content analysis of all the articles published in American Psychologist during the 1990s revealed that 97% had liberal themes (Redding, 2001). Furthermore, recent research suggests many social psychologists would blatantly discriminate based on politics. About 37% admitted that, given equally qualified conservative and liberal job applicants, the liberal candidate should be hired over the conservative candidate (Inbar & Lammers, 2012).

Although it was an excellent review of the most recent literature on the topic of political bias in science, this framing was most unfortunate. Why?

1. Because most faculty in the social sciences and humanities are liberals

2. The proposal would be reviewed by faculty in the social sciences or humanities

and

3. Telling them that "the research shows you are biased by your own politics" risked evoking hostility.

I have advised over 20 of these in the last few years and nearly all have been funded. But this proposal was not funded.
What did the reviewers complain about? Here is the feedback Urvashi received with the rejection:

"I encourage the student researcher to dedicate more effort to explaining why this research question is meaningful to the field and how it fits into the broader body of knowledge. Meaningful research must emanate from previous work and in some way address a gap in the literature or offer a new perspective on understanding a problem. Moreover, I encourage the researcher to pay close attention to clearly defining the behavior (dependent variable) the research seeks to explain. It was unclear whether the research question dealt with the effect of ideology on psychologists' research methods or on their professionalism in dealing with colleagues."

I protested the review to the director of the program who did not even bother to respond to the first few emails I sent, and, when he did, basically blew me off.

So we decided to try an "anecdotal experiment" -- i.e., to change one and only one thing about the proposal, resubmit it to the same program, and see what happened. What did we change? That one, "offending" introductory paragraph. We deleted it altogether, and replaced it with this:

Conservatives are often more skeptical of scientific research than are liberals, and they are often more willing to sacrifice science to achieve political goals (Anglin & Jussim, in preparation). Furthermore, science has a long and checkered history of periodically being used and exploited as a tool to advance nefarious rightwing political agendas (e.g., social Darwinism; Nazi eliminationist practices; Herrnstein & Murray's (1994) claims about genetic bases of race differences in intelligence).

We bagged a slew of liberal bugaboos in one short paragraph, none of which were relevant to the topic. We saw this as really "vamping for the camera" -- as risking being so obviously transparently manipulative, and silly, and superficial, that we would be caught red-handed, and it would be rejected again.

WRONG. The proposal was funded.

Apparently, condemning Nazis, social Darwininsts, and Herrnstein and Murray was all it took. All those reasons the first proposal was supposedly "unclear," "failed to offer some new understanding" and failed to "fit into the broader field" (see the rejecting reviewer's comments) suddenly evaporated, and why the resubmitted proposal was interesting and important became obvious.

Also: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big-questions/201103/does-psychology-have-liberal-bias

[Tisket]

Someone want to quote my previous post please. The OP is a weak-minded pussy who fears reading my posts so much that he has me on ignore.

Thanks.

[Tisket]

http://images.sussexpublishers.netdna-cdn.com/article-inline-half/blogs/91994/2013/09/133296-132967.jpg

[Tgo01]

Did you read the study?

Actually I did and so far in this thread I have been directly quoting Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, who was one of the people discussing this study in the link you provided.

I just wanted to see if you even read what you linked, which apparently you have not.

[Tgo01]

Okay then, let's look at another, more recent Psychology Today study: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201309/liberal-bias-in-social-psychology-personal-experience-i

Liberal Bias in Social Psychology

I began to suspect that my colleagues' politics distorted their science long ago. Not always, but sometimes. A few years ago, I began new work trying to develop a questionnaire to assess people's explicit willingness to sacrifice science to advance political goals. In doing that research, we sought funding from an internal Rutgers source, a great program that provides funding for undergraduate research projects. So, Urvashi, an undergraduate in my lab, proposed a questionnaire to assess how willing people were to sacrifice science to advance their politics.

Urvashi's funding proposal led off with the following paragraph:

The field of psychology is dominated by liberals (Redding, 2001), and this political homogeneity can be problematic . . In fact, content analysis of all the articles published in American Psychologist during the 1990s revealed that 97% had liberal themes (Redding, 2001). Furthermore, recent research suggests many social psychologists would blatantly discriminate based on politics. About 37% admitted that, given equally qualified conservative and liberal job applicants, the liberal candidate should be hired over the conservative candidate (Inbar & Lammers, 2012).

Although it was an excellent review of the most recent literature on the topic of political bias in science, this framing was most unfortunate. Why?

1. Because most faculty in the social sciences and humanities are liberals

2. The proposal would be reviewed by faculty in the social sciences or humanities

and

3. Telling them that "the research shows you are biased by your own politics" risked evoking hostility.

I have advised over 20 of these in the last few years and nearly all have been funded. But this proposal was not funded.
What did the reviewers complain about? Here is the feedback Urvashi received with the rejection:

"I encourage the student researcher to dedicate more effort to explaining why this research question is meaningful to the field and how it fits into the broader body of knowledge. Meaningful research must emanate from previous work and in some way address a gap in the literature or offer a new perspective on understanding a problem. Moreover, I encourage the researcher to pay close attention to clearly defining the behavior (dependent variable) the research seeks to explain. It was unclear whether the research question dealt with the effect of ideology on psychologists' research methods or on their professionalism in dealing with colleagues."

I protested the review to the director of the program who did not even bother to respond to the first few emails I sent, and, when he did, basically blew me off.

So we decided to try an "anecdotal experiment" -- i.e., to change one and only one thing about the proposal, resubmit it to the same program, and see what happened. What did we change? That one, "offending" introductory paragraph. We deleted it altogether, and replaced it with this:

Conservatives are often more skeptical of scientific research than are liberals, and they are often more willing to sacrifice science to achieve political goals (Anglin & Jussim, in preparation). Furthermore, science has a long and checkered history of periodically being used and exploited as a tool to advance nefarious rightwing political agendas (e.g., social Darwinism; Nazi eliminationist practices; Herrnstein & Murray's (1994) claims about genetic bases of race differences in intelligence).

We bagged a slew of liberal bugaboos in one short paragraph, none of which were relevant to the topic. We saw this as really "vamping for the camera" -- as risking being so obviously transparently manipulative, and silly, and superficial, that we would be caught red-handed, and it would be rejected again.

WRONG. The proposal was funded.

Apparently, condemning Nazis, social Darwininsts, and Herrnstein and Murray was all it took. All those reasons the first proposal was supposedly "unclear," "failed to offer some new understanding" and failed to "fit into the broader field" (see the rejecting reviewer's comments) suddenly evaporated, and why the resubmitted proposal was interesting and important became obvious.


Also: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big-questions/201103/does-psychology-have-liberal-bias

.

[Tisket]

Here's an interesting result from the second part of his study http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201310/liberal-bias-in-social-psychology-personal-experience-ii :

The main question was: Who would be more biased in their judgments of the article, liberals or conservatives? People were asked to indicate how true they considered the article to be, and how biased they considered the author to be.And the resounding answer was: Liberals were far more biased. Liberals viewed the articles reporting “liberal” results (affirmative action and same sex relationships are good) as truer and reflecting less author bias than the articles reporting “conservative” results. Conservatives, in contrast, viewed the truthfulness and bias in the articles as nearly identical, regardless of their results.

[cwolff]

Actually I did and so far in this thread I have been directly quoting Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, who was one of the people discussing this study in the link you provided.

I just wanted to see if you even read what you linked, which apparently you have not.

For a minute there, I thought you were actually going to engage in conversation and have a dialog. Instead you're playing your little "gotcha" games.

[Tgo01]

For a minute there, I thought you were actually going to engage in conversation and have a dialog. Instead you're playing your little "gotcha" games.

Don't be bitter just because I bested you again :p

I also like how I was quoting a social and cognitive psychologist working at the University of Virginia who was talking about this very article and all you came back with was "did you even read the study" and you thought I was the one unwilling to engage in conversation and have a dialog?

[Tisket]

This guy's done an entire series on the subject. Interesting reads: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201309/introduction-liberal-bias-in-social-psychology

[Latrinsorm]

This is silly.

We can say definitively men are taller than women on average but you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller.

Also it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.You couldn't know for sure, but you would expect the random man to be taller than the random woman. Science, not logic.
WRONG. The proposal was funded.On top of the obvious problem of a sample size of 1 that the proposer mentions on his page, the two proposals aren't mirrors of each other. The reviewer asked for the proposal to be related to a broader body of knowledge, the second proposal specifically included references to a broader body of knowledge (that he considered them irrelevant is immaterial). The reviewer also asked to clarify between politics-research and politics-hiring, and politics-hiring was not included in the second proposal.

It's just not a very well-designed experiment.

[cwolff]

Don't be bitter just because I bested you again :p

I also like how I was quoting a social and cognitive psychologist working at the University of Virginia who was talking about this very article and all you came back with was "did you even read the study" and you thought I was the one unwilling to engage in conversation and have a dialog?

I just think you're kind of an idiot.

[Parkbandit]

Wait.. is the OP about Obama.. since he's the Great Conservative now?

[Parkbandit]

Don't be bitter just because I bested you again :p


Not much of a goal.

It's painfully easy to do.

[Tisket]

On top of the obvious problem of a sample size of 1 that the proposer mentions on his page, the two proposals aren't mirrors of each other. The reviewer asked for the proposal to be related to a broader body of knowledge, the second proposal specifically included references to a broader body of knowledge (that he considered them irrelevant is immaterial). The reviewer also asked to clarify between politics-research and politics-hiring, and politics-hiring was not included in the second proposal.

It's just not a very well-designed experiment.

Your liberal bias is showing again, Clyde.

[Tisket]

Not much of a goal.

It's painfully easy to do.

I almost feel sorry for him. He's a parody of the ridiculous.

[Latrinsorm]

Your liberal bias is showing again, Clyde.I think if you asked him, Dr. Jussim would roll his eyes but grudgingly agree with my counterpoints. He might also refer to the larger context of his lifetime experiences as justification for his conclusion on this event, but I would raise my eyebrows and win that point too.

It's just hard to figure how I have a liberal bias when I'm on record supporting President Bush throughout his second term.

[Wrathbringer]

It's just hard to figure how I have a liberal bias when I'm on record supporting President Bush throughout his second term.

Because being slightly less liberal than a liberal doesn't make one a conservative. People need to realize that.

[Latrinsorm]

I have never claimed to be a conservative. My claims are that:
1. If I had a liberal bias, how could I support President Bush?
2. If I had a conservative bias, how could I support President Obama?
Therefore, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I am provably free of bias.

[cwolff]

Because being slightly less liberal than a liberal doesn't make one a conservative. People need to realize that.


I have never claimed to be a conservative. My claims are that:
1. If I had a liberal bias, how could I support President Bush?
2. If I had a conservative bias, how could I support President Obama?
Therefore, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I am provably free of bias.

It's always a touch of a shock when we're dealing with this kind of logic and the person who says it is so emphatic.
Republican says something unfavorable about GOP - "He's a RINO!"
Republican goes on MSNBC - "He's not republican, I don't care what he says!"
Latrin says he's a Republican - "You're just a liberal!"

I've said this before and I'm sure it isn't helping Latrin out at all, but he's rather Fair and Balanced on this forum. I don't always agree with him, but I never see him firing platitudes, cliche and lies back at people he doesn't like or doesn't agree with.

[Ker_Thwap]

It's always a touch of a shock when we're dealing with this kind of logic and the person who says it is so emphatic.
Republican says something unfavorable about GOP - "He's a RINO!"
Republican goes on MSNBC - "He's not republican, I don't care what he says!"
Latrin says he's a Republican - "You're just a liberal!"

I've said this before and I'm sure it isn't helping Latrin out at all, but he's rather Fair and Balanced on this forum. I don't always agree with him, but I never see him firing platitudes, cliche and lies back at people he doesn't like or doesn't agree with.

He's actually a master of firing cliches and platitudes at people he doesn't like. He's fairly clever in his obfuscation so that one rarely knows if he's actually supporting a position or playing devil's advocate.

[Tisket]

He's actually a master of firing cliches and platitudes at people he doesn't like. He's fairly clever in his obfuscation so that one rarely knows if he's actually supporting a position or playing devil's advocate.

I agree. His posting style would never be likened to a hammer.

[Wrathbringer]

I agree. His posting style would never be likened to a hammer.

To what would you liken my posting style, Tisket?

[Tisket]

To what would you liken my posting style, Tisket?

I will formulate my opinion after you've been posting a few more years.

I don't like to be hasty.

[Latrinsorm]

He's actually a master of firing cliches and platitudes at people he doesn't like. He's fairly clever in his obfuscation so that one rarely knows if he's actually supporting a position or playing devil's advocate.Ah, but whom don't I like? :)

[Tisket]

According to rep comments, you like me very much but that never stops you from disagreeing with me.

I like it when people think you are agreeing with them but, on closer inspection, you are actually disagreeing.

[Wrathbringer]

I will formulate my opinion after you've been posting a few more years.

I don't like to be hasty.

:clown2:

[Latrinsorm]

According to rep comments, you like me very much but that never stops you from disagreeing with me.

I like it when people think you are agreeing with them but, on closer inspection, you are actually disagreeing.:heart: