Brain Fever - I learned

Brain Fever - I learned long ago - some ideas from the ultra-loony left need to be kept in perspective; sometimes satire is the only real answer, and there's hardly anyone better at it than Scrappleface...

...who ably lampoons the new Berkeley study that tries to pass off conservatism as some sort of pathology.

The scary part was, when I first read it, I had to check and doublecheck to make sure the Berkeley article wasn't some hamfisted spoof of politicized soft-science research as well.

No such luck.

BERKELEY – Politically conservative agendas may range from supporting the Vietnam War to upholding traditional moral and religious values to opposing welfare. But are there consistent underlying motivations?

I do cognitive research to support software development, so I'm not completely unfamiliar with either the techniques of analyzying peoples' states of mind, or basic experimental procedures, either.

So let's see how this "report" stacks up:

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

"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

Assistant Professor Jack Glaser of the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and Visiting Professor Frank Sulloway of UC Berkeley joined lead author, Associate Professor John Jost of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and Professor Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland at College Park, to analyze the literature on conservatism.

Where to start with this article?

Who Were the Resarchers? Yeah, we got their names, but what are their backgrounds and biases? I mean, if a group of tobacco-industry employees did a study showing tobacco to be harmless, would that cast some aspersions on the study?

Fear not. What Berkeley won't tell you, I will. Jack Glaser is a UCLA researcher whose body of research leans heavily toward leftist social causes. I'll let you be the judge about Berkeley's Frank Sulloway. John Jost and Arie Kruglanski both have quite a few far-left buzzwords in their curriculum vitae.

Which is certainly their right as American Citizens and academics - but the fact that all four "study" authors are more or less overtly left-wing, and work in academic estabishments (UCBerkeley, UCLA, U of Maryland) that are far to the left of even normal American academia should be considered when assigning any credibility to the "study".

The psychologists sought patterns among 88 samples, involving 22,818 participants, taken from journal articles, books and conference papers. The material originating from 12 countries included speeches and interviews given by politicians, opinions and verdicts rendered by judges, as well as experimental, field and survey studies.

Ten meta-analytic calculations performed on the material - which included various types of literature and approaches from different countries and groups - yielded consistent, common threads, Glaser said.

As would have been predictable, I'd suspect, given the authors' biases!

Note that none of these methods, or source materials, are ever explained in the article.

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.

Note the rhetorical legerdemain - comparing two modern-day, American sociopolitical conservatives with two fascist butchers. Coming from a bunch of E-Democracy posters, that'd be one thing; coming from allegedly respected academics, though - who are perfectly aware of the rhetorical weight of the connection - is beneath contempt.

It's also a lie. Hitler was no conservative. Yes, indeed, he harkened back to the German people's mythical "volk" traditions, but his aim was to radically change German society (while using the parts he needed to his benefit) - which is the opposite of conservative.

The researchers said that conservative ideologies, like virtually all belief systems, develop in part because they satisfy some psychological needs, but that "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false, irrational, or unprincipled."

They also stressed that their findings are not judgmental.

"In many cases, including mass politics, 'liberal' traits may be liabilities, and being intolerant of ambiguity, high on the need for closure, or low in cognitive complexity might be associated with such generally valued characteristics as personal commitment and unwavering loyalty," the researchers wrote.

Fair enough - but that begs a huge methodological question:

Conservative...as opposed to what? What makes a person liberal, or pro-choice, or "green"?

We get to what I suspect is the real reason for this report:

This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes, the researchers advised.

The latest debate about the possibility that the Bush administration ignored intelligence information that discounted reports of Iraq buying nuclear material from Africa may be linked to the conservative intolerance for ambiguity and or need for closure, said Glaser.

Well, that would certainly justify the "study", wouldn't it?

The article notes that:

"For a variety of psychological reasons, then, right-wing populism may have more consistent appeal than left-wing populism, especially in times of potential crisis and instability," he said.

In other words, conservatism fulfills peoples' need to be safe, and to view certain things (like the possibility of being nuked by a terrorist) in fairly black and white terms.

Glaser acknowledged that the team's exclusive assessment of the psychological motivations of political conservatism might be viewed as a partisan exercise. However, he said, there is a host of information available about conservatism, but not about liberalism.

Huh?

Above, the authors say their source materials are taken from speeches, articles and media appearances. Liberals don't write articles?

The researchers conceded cases of left-wing ideologues, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro, who, once in power, steadfastly resisted change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism.

Yet, they noted that some of these figures might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended.

But we're not talking about the conservatism of self-preservation, here - we're talking about political conservatism as practiced in the United States. Right?

In the interest of fairness, they do get one part right:

Although they concluded that conservatives are less "integratively complex" than others are, Glaser said, "it doesn't mean that they're simple-minded."

Conservatives don't feel the need to jump through complex, intellectual hoops in order to understand or justify some of their positions, he said. "They are more comfortable seeing and stating things in black and white in ways that would make liberals squirm," Glaser said.

He pointed as an example to a 2001 trip to Italy, where President George W. Bush was asked to explain himself. The Republican president told assembled world leaders, "I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right." And in 2002, Bush told a British reporter, "Look, my job isn't to nuance."

There may have been an academic reason for this study - but deep-down, I think it has more to with buttressing the liberal need to feel better, smarter and more sophisticated than their opponents.

Whew.

Maybe Scrappleface had the right idea after all.

Posted by Mitch at July 25, 2003 12:50 PM