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Does politics reflect personality?
A new article in Psychology Today suggests the following:
• Liberals are messier than conservatives. Their rooms have more clutter, more color. Conservatives’ rooms are better organized, more brightly lit, and more conventional. Liberals have more books and their books are on a greater variety of topics.
• Compared to liberals, conservatives are less tolerant of ambiguity, a trait researchers say is exemplified when George Bush says things like, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think," and "I'm the decider."
• Conservatives have a greater fear of death.
• Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.
• Conservatives are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, rule-following, duty, and orderliness.
• Conservatives have a greater need to reach a decision quickly and stick to it.
• When people are prompted to think about death—a state of mind psychologists call mortality salience—they actually become more conservative.
• Conservatives are more likely to have been insecure as kids, whereas liberals are more likely to have been confident as kids.
I can assure you my room is messy, and I wonder if more finely grained categories would have been useful.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 11, 2007 at 06:08 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Isn't this just another "liberal=hip" meme that has been around for decades.
I would also assume that the author manages to find a way to exclude almost all blacks and hispanics from the "liberal" category even though they are overwhelmingly Democratic party voters.
Posted by: superdestroyer at Jan 11, 2007 7:18:42 AM
I can't help but to roll my eyes at this study. we've all heard this before. liberals not only have more sex, but better sex. they not only attend more parties, but more exclusive ones. hilarious stuff.
Posted by: younghov at Jan 11, 2007 7:43:44 AM
My liberal friends tell me I'm very conservative, yet not one of them would support the notion that my desk was ever neat (save for the first and last hours at it in my career). More, in a recent move, my books required about 50 boxes and covered a lot of topics from math and statistics through economics and history, as well as an assortment of fiction.
And that last item sounds like that bogus study done at a particular California day care center.
And some wonder why Psychology has a reputation for vapidity.
Posted by: Paul McMahon at Jan 11, 2007 7:45:03 AM
According to the article- "As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics."
In other words, conservatives are more risk averse. I wonder how this applies to current political climate, where liberal policies seem more about hedging risk.
Also, from the article - "Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men." Guess that makes me conservative :)
Posted by: Smithy at Jan 11, 2007 7:55:33 AM
Liberals are more likely than conservatives to publish self-congratulatory studies.
Posted by: J. at Jan 11, 2007 8:23:45 AM
I don't really buy this -- at my school in the deep south, the rare liberals were definitely the ones being victimized, and I would assume there are opposite biases in other regions.
But if I did buy it, IMHO there is no shame in being picked on in school, or fearful or offended or otherwise vulnerable. And in any case, no real liberal would hold it against someone. Liberals are supposed to be on the side of the victims, right? If I had a dollar for every time a liberal had told me that I was conservative only because I was privileged and didn't know what it was like to be a victim, well, then I could afford to pay much higher taxes.
Posted by: DK at Jan 11, 2007 8:34:33 AM
Tyler, you are NOT a conservative, although, despite your protests, you ARE a Republican! (Voting for GWB, WPE, is sufficient)
Funny the reactions here. I do not how reliable this test is, but it would not suprise me, but I thought this was a libertarian-ish site, which would thoroughly reject the more general conservative mindset, which is obviously, protect me from change, and provide order. Libertarians, despite their silliness standing awthwart history, would be, in this type of categorization, on the liberal side of the ledger, so you guys get to have the good sex too!
Posted by: theCoach at Jan 11, 2007 8:39:55 AM
hmm, I am tempted to add on the basis of this thread that "conservatives are more inclined to believe that they can refute statistical analysis with anecdote". But of course, that would be an anecdote.
Surely these guys have just rediscovered the f-type personality, which experimental psychologists have been doing roughly once every three years since Adorno?
Posted by: dsquared at Jan 11, 2007 8:48:25 AM
Conservatives have a greater fear of death
Whoa. That doesn't make sense. As conservatives are more religious than liberals, they should have less fear of death.
Posted by: Peter at Jan 11, 2007 9:09:35 AM
What about libertarians?
Posted by: josh at Jan 11, 2007 9:11:15 AM
I'm just seconding "theCoach" here, but
Tyler, you are not Conservative.
Steve Sailor wrote
"There are three obvious ways to get rich as a nonfiction writer.
Flatter conservatives that they are more moral, patriotic, and practical-minded than liberals.
Flatter liberals that they are more ethical, cosmopolitan, and high-minded than conservatives.
Give people advice, especially on how to make more money."
I think that that summarizes fairly well.
If you are more flattered by being called ethical, cosmopolitan, and high minded than being called moral, patriotic, and practical minded, your a liberal. Your just a bit confused about the liberality of the current administration vis-a-vis the Democrats.
It actually reminds me of WWII US propaganda and Japanese propaganda. Both sides agreed on the main points. The US is individualistic, diverse, etc, and the Japanese are cooperative, united, etc. They just differed in what they were and wanted to be. It's the same with conservatives and liberals. The cultural conflict is very real, and much older and deeper than the politics, dating to well before the English Civil War.
Posted by: michael vassar at Jan 11, 2007 9:17:47 AM
Unless psychology has changed the definition of conservative, Joseph Stalin is still a member of the right wing.
Posted by: Matt at Jan 11, 2007 9:18:08 AM
Or perhaps, Peter, Conservatives are religious *because* they fear death.
Posted by: AWT at Jan 11, 2007 9:22:43 AM
"and more conventional": hang on, he's just defined two different conventions and then said that one mob is "more conventional" than the other. Bollocks - oops, I beg your pardon, he exhibits an internal inconsistency in his logic.
Posted by: dearieme at Jan 11, 2007 9:43:33 AM
So, basically, the "study" implies that "conservativeness" is a result of a series of psychological problems while liberalness is composed of cool, messy, open-minded and fearless people...
yeah, right!
Posted by: paulo at Jan 11, 2007 9:47:35 AM
hmm, I am tempted to add on the basis of this thread that "conservatives are more inclined to believe that they can refute statistical analysis with anecdote". But of course, that would be an anecdote.
You could also add defensive.
Also, keep in mind that the study may not be wrong just because you are messy, have a lot of books and are conservative. It didn't say ALL liberals are messier and have more books.
Posted by: dsk at Jan 11, 2007 10:39:14 AM
"When people are prompted to think about death—a state of mind psychologists call mortality salience—they actually become more conservative."
My wife's breast cancer has caused her to go from a socialist liberal to a values conservative.
Posted by: Todd Fletcher at Jan 11, 2007 10:40:59 AM
"Unless psychology has changed the definition of conservative, Joseph Stalin is still a member of the right wing. "
Stalin was a moderate and then a left-wing communist. I think that categorizes him as left-wing overall.
Posted by: liberty at Jan 11, 2007 11:11:57 AM
Also keep in mind that conservatives who read this site (and liberals, for that matter) probably lean more towards libertarianism that the majority of their party. Considering this is not the mainstream Republican position (especially in today's GOP), haven't conservatives who espouse more libertarian tendencies already demonstrated a greater open mindedness and intellectual curiosity than is normal, as opposed to simply toeing the party line?
My point being that conservative readers of this site are probably more likely to be outliers and thus able to present counter factual anecdotes.
Posted by: Van at Jan 11, 2007 11:14:39 AM
So liberals are more like Hawkeye Pierce and conservatives are more like Frank Burns? Astounding.
I wonder what other types of research you can do from watching M*A*S*H re-runs.
Posted by: Mike Moffatt at Jan 11, 2007 11:54:19 AM
Isn't this study just an ad hominem argument done the modern way? Actually not so modern - I remember liberal critics claiming that Barry Goldwater's philosophy was due to early (strict) toilet training.
Posted by: Rich Berger at Jan 11, 2007 12:25:22 PM
Peter:
Whoa. That doesn't make sense. As conservatives are more religious than liberals, they should have less fear of death.
I thought the same thing, until I read the other point about death. Maybe conservatives fear death more because they think about it more, and thinking about it more makes them conservative.
Posted by: Brandon Berg at Jan 11, 2007 12:29:30 PM
dsquared, I think it is blog commenters who are more likely to believe that anecdotes can trump data.
Posted by: DK at Jan 11, 2007 12:31:55 PM
Which persuasion is less likely to close an HTML tag?
Posted by: Anderson at Jan 11, 2007 12:34:03 PM
Oh, BTW-
Mike M - that was good. Mike V - oh, yeah, that's right, WWII was just a clash of perceptions. Where was Rodney King when we needed him?
Posted by: Rich Berger at Jan 11, 2007 12:37:25 PM
