« Further thoughts on a carbon tax | Main | Tim Harford's chapter eight, a contribution from Sahar Akhtar »
The personality traits of liberals and conservatives
This topic does not die easily:
Dr Wilson and Dr Storm restricted their study to white, Protestant teenagers, in order to eliminate confounding variables. However, their volunteers came from two different traditions—Pentecostal, which tends to the conservative, and Episcopalian, which tends to the liberal.
The researchers conducted the study by giving each volunteer a beeper that went off every two hours or so. When it beeped, the volunteer answered a questionnaire about what he was doing at that moment, and how he felt about it.
Dr Wilson and Dr Storm found several unexpected differences between the groups. Liberal teenagers always felt more stress than conservatives, but were particularly stressed if they could not decide for themselves whom they spent time with. Such choice, or the lack of it, did not change conservative stress levels. Liberals were also loners, spending a quarter of their time on their own. Conservatives were alone for a sixth of the time. That may have been related to the fact that liberals were equally bored by their own company and that of others. Conservatives were far less bored when with other people. They also preferred the company of relatives to non-relatives. Liberals were indifferent. Perhaps most intriguingly, the more religious a liberal teenager claimed to be, the more he was willing to confront his parents with dissenting beliefs. The opposite was true for conservatives.
Here is Storm's doctoral thesis, a source for some of the material. This Wilson blog post is a useful summary; nonetheless it emphasizes the weaker part of the results, namely the claim that conservatives are more conformist.
Surely someday we will make progress on this question; it is unlikely that any two non-random groups will have exactly the same personality traits. But what is the correct comparison? By looking only at religious Protestants, we are holding some factors constant, but perhaps choosing atypical members of each political ideology. For instance maybe all we are doing is comparing Pentecostals to Episcopalians.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 25, 2008 at 05:58 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
As a (politically) conservative Episcopalian, yes, this is a good description of Episcopalians vs. Pentacostals with almost nothing to do with political beliefs. It's interesting as religious sociology though.
Posted by: DK at Feb 25, 2008 8:02:06 AM
There are a lot of differences between Episcopalian and Pentacostal families, such as, income and education levels of the parents, which might account for any observed differences.
A more appropriate comparison might have been to compare youths from two denominations that had split over conservative versus liberal theology. I suggest the Presbyterian Church USA (liberal in theology and its members tend to be politically liberal) and the Presbyterian Church in American (conservative in theology and its members are overwhelmingly conservative on political issues).
Posted by: subrosa at Feb 25, 2008 8:10:08 AM
man...look at subrosa, knowing about pcusa and pca. didn't figure anyone knew about those strange presbyterians here at mr. :)
Posted by: shawn at Feb 25, 2008 8:35:35 AM
"conservatives are more conformist" What about that old liberal slogan "I wanna be different, like everybody else"?
Posted by: dearieme at Feb 25, 2008 9:48:50 AM
Conformism is a 2-dimensional thing.
There is good conformism and bad conformism. The question is, when a person is conformist/non-conformist, is it in areas of their life that help them or hurt them.
Take my favorite topic of investing. You want to be conformist in choosing fairly staid investments (stocks versus get-rich-quick schemes) but you want to be non-conformist (contrarian) when selecting assets and carving a niche. You let other people blaze the path, and then you pick the tasty berries along the way that other people overlook.
In the teen context, compare conforming to society versus conforming to your peer group. I imagine conservatism tends to conform to what has "worked" in the past. The problem arises when what has "worked" has merely kept you alive, but has taken you very far off course, imperceptably, over time. Further conformity to the status quo is not smart in this case. Conversely, trying new things is okay, as long as you realize that most of the time, they don't work.
Posted by: andrew at Feb 25, 2008 10:08:42 AM
Perhaps most intriguingly, the more religious a liberal teenager claimed to be, the more he was willing to confront his parents with dissenting beliefs. The opposite was true for conservatives.
I can present an alternate hypothesis than conformity. Pentecostals are a bible-believing denomination, Episcopalians are not. Young, devout Pentecostals are less likely to have a generation gap than their parents. Furthermore, they will respect the biblical command to honor their parents. However, I would suspect that the devout pentecostals are probably more willing to go against the grain of society than devout Episcopalians.
Posted by: Justin at Feb 25, 2008 10:53:38 AM
Not to mention the self-selection for those who would be willing to be interrupted by a beeper every two hours and to report to researchers what they were doing. If the kids weren't loners before the study, this probably drove away all of their friends.
Posted by: Jim Hu at Feb 25, 2008 11:03:54 AM
The cost of such research should drop as text messaging approaches ubiquity.
Posted by: Walt at Feb 25, 2008 12:09:13 PM
As a pentecostal with Episcopalian in-laws I think that group differences would account for almost all of the results. Pentecostalism is a very social form of religion, Episcopalian ism, not so much.
Posted by: sourcreamus at Feb 25, 2008 12:45:21 PM
I have nothing to add, other than I hope my tax dollars did not help pay for this study.
Posted by: Grant at Feb 25, 2008 2:51:03 PM
"Perhaps most intriguingly, the more religious a liberal teenager claimed to be, the more he was willing to confront his parents with dissenting beliefs."
From Stuff White People Like:
"#2 Religions that their parents don’t belong to"
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/2-religions-that-their-parents-dont-belong-to/
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Feb 25, 2008 5:06:37 PM
From The Economist link:
Dr Wilson suspects that the liberal package of individualism and confrontation is the appropriate response to survival in a stable environment in which there is leisure for learning and reflection, and the consequences for a group's stability of such dissent are low. The conservative package of collectivism and conformity, by contrast, works in an unstable environment where joint action, and thus obedience to their group, are at a premium.
The dichotomy holds for politics. People with collectivist and conformist home life prefer individualism and confrontation (capitalism). People with individualistic and confrontational home life prefer collectivist and conformist politics (socialism).
Posted by: 8 at Feb 25, 2008 5:42:00 PM
"For instance maybe all we are doing is comparing Pentecostals to Episcopalians."
Isn't it even more tellingly the case that all we are doing is comparing *teenage* Pentecostals to *teenage* Episcopalians? And that this is not a possibility, but a certainty?
Doesn't one then ask oneself what else, if anything, such a comparison might indicate? My answer would be: nothing.
Posted by: John Lilly at Feb 25, 2008 11:20:10 PM
Why study teenagers in the context of 'liberal' vs 'conservative'? I'd venture to say their limited life experience has left them, as yet, undefined.
Posted by: Todd LaBerge at Mar 2, 2008 9:56:32 PM
