It was put to me today that liberalism is a mental disorder and that such a theory is 'scientific'. I'm interested to see whether there is any justification for this view.
This article is interesting.
Here's a Scientific American article on political differences and how much of that is unconscious.
Part of me thinks that I simply should not respond to anything Epoetker, Darth E or MonutainMan says that is this provocative (and frankly ridiculous). OTOH the idea of the psychological bases of political opinion is an interesting one.
This article is interesting.
In the new study, Dodd and his colleagues had 48 adults who were strongly conservative or strongly liberal look at a series of 33 pictures. Some of the pictures were pleasant, such as that of a fluffy bunny. Others, including a picture of a maggot-infested wound and another of a man with a spider on his face, were downright disgusting.
While the participants looked at the photos, researchers monitored their skin conductance, a measure of minute changes in sweating that reveals how excited and emotional someone feels, in this case, about a given image. They found that, consistent with other studies, conservatives responded more strongly to the negative images.
While the participants looked at the photos, researchers monitored their skin conductance, a measure of minute changes in sweating that reveals how excited and emotional someone feels, in this case, about a given image. They found that, consistent with other studies, conservatives responded more strongly to the negative images.
In a second experiment, the researchers repeated the procedure with images of polarizing politicians, including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Again, they found a political difference: Conservatives responded more strongly to politicians they disagreed with, such as Clinton, than they did to politicians they liked. Liberals, on the other hand, had a stronger physiological reaction to politicians they agreed with than they did to politicians they disliked.
The findings provide extra evidence that basic biology may play a role in political choices, Dodd said. Of course, not every country has a liberal-conservative split like the United States. Most likely, Dodd said, you'd see a similar difference between more right-wing and more left-wing people, but the size of that difference might be smaller.
"I'm Canadian, and I would say that our right is actually fairly liberal in many regards," Dodd said. "So I think you would still expect to find some differences there, but I think it's a question of what the magnitude of those differences are."
"I'm Canadian, and I would say that our right is actually fairly liberal in many regards," Dodd said. "So I think you would still expect to find some differences there, but I think it's a question of what the magnitude of those differences are."
“These are not superficial differences. They are psychologically deep,” says psychologist John Jost of New York University, a co-author of the bedroom study. “My hunch is that the capacity to organize the political world into left or right may be a part of human nature.”
Although conservatives and liberals are fundamentally different, hints are emerging about how to bring them together—or at least help them coexist. In his recent book The Righteous Mind, psychologist Jonathan Haidt of the N.Y.U. Stern School of Business argues that liberals and conservatives need not revile one another as immoral on issues such as birth control, gay marriage or health care reform. Even if these two worldviews clash, they are equally grounded in ethics, he writes. Meanwhile studies by Jost and others suggest that political views reside on a continuum that is mediated in part by universal human emotions such as fear. Under certain circumstances, everyone can shift closer to the middle—or drift further apart.
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