Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

At Yale, experiment turned conservatives into liberals (Ministry of Love, Room 101)

#1
C C Offline
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/insp...divisions/

EXCERPT: [...] Conservatives, it turns out, react more strongly to physical threat than liberals do. [...] In one University of California study, the more fear a 4-year-old showed in a laboratory situation, the more conservative his or her political attitudes were found to be 20 years later. Brain imaging studies have even shown that the fear center of the brain, the amygdala, is actually larger in conservatives than in liberals. And many other laboratory studies have found that when adult liberals experienced physical threat, their political and social attitudes became more conservative (temporarily, of course). But no one had ever turned conservatives into liberals.

Until we did.

In a new study [...] my colleagues [...] and I asked 300 U.S. residents in an online survey their opinions on several contemporary issues such as gay rights, abortion, feminism and immigration, as well as social change in general. The group was two-thirds female, about three-quarters white, with an average age of 35. Thirty-percent of the participants self-identified as Republican, and the rest as Democrat.

[...] if they had instead just imagined being completely physically safe, the Republicans became significantly more liberal — their positions on social attitudes were much more like the Democratic respondents. [...] Imagining being completely safe from physical harm had done what no experiment had done before — it had turned conservatives into liberals.

In both instances, we had manipulated a deeper underlying reason for political attitudes, the strength of the basic motivation of safety and survival. The boiling water of our social and political attitudes, it seems, can be turned up or down by changing how physically safe we feel.

This is why it makes sense that liberal politicians intuitively portray danger as manageable — recall FDR’s famous Great Depression era reassurance of “nothing to fear but fear itself,” echoed decades later in Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address — and why President Trump and other Republican politicians are instead likely to emphasize the dangers of terrorism and immigration, relying on fear as a motivator to gain votes.

[...] All of us believe that our social and political attitudes are based on good reasons and reflect our important values. But we also need to recognize how much they can be influenced subconsciously by our most basic, powerful motivations for safety and survival. Politicians on both sides of the aisle know this already and attempt to manipulate our votes and party allegiances by appealing to these potent feelings of fear and of safety.

Instead of allowing our strings to be pulled so easily by others, we can become more conscious of what drives us and work harder to base our opinions on factual knowledge about the issues...

MORE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/insp...divisions/
Reply
#2
Syne Offline
They do love to get these headlines out there far ahead of sharing methodology.

Amygdala volume changes with posttraumatic stress disorder in a large case-controlled veteran group
"These results provide clear evidence of an association between smaller amygdala volume and PTSD. The lack of correlation between trauma load or illness chronicity and amygdala volume suggests that either a smaller amygdala represents a vulnerability to developing PTSD, or the lack of a dose-response relationship with amygdala volume."
Reply
#3
Magical Realist Offline
Conservativism is basically a politics of fear. Fear of blacks, fear of gays, fear of strong women, fear of muslims, fear of immigrants, fear of big government, fear of intellectuals, fear of poverty, fear of atheists, fear of liberals, you name it. Give them a vallium and they all become Michael Moore. lol!
Reply
#4
Yazata Offline
(Nov 26, 2017 06:37 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: Conservativism is basically a politics of fear.

Isn't that true of all politics? All politics can be depicted in terms of fear: who fears what, and where they look for protection.

Blacks fear living in a white majority country. Gays fear straights. Jews fear being a religious minority. Women fear being without a husband-surrogate to support them. Millenials fear having to get a job and having to support themselves.  

What typifies American-style social-"liberals" is that just about every one of them fears their average fellow citizens. (A liberal is a New Yorker or a San Franciscan who would be more comfortable in Paris than red-state Middle America.) And they look to a strong aggressive federal government for protection against the things that they fear. That's what makes them skeptical about democracy (they denounce popular sovereignty as "populism", as if it was something bad) and always seem more in favor of aristocratic rule by elites (government employees, celebrities, university professors, the news media), those like themselves who believe that they know better than everyone else about what the little-people should think and how they should conduct their lives.

Fear of their fellows is also why they seem to constantly be at war against the country's history and its traditions. It's why they so passionately want to destroy everything that America once was, everything that Americans once believed in, everything that made America great, and replace all of it with... something else. New values, new ideals, new social organization... new people. Everything idealistic and utopian of course.

What typifies conservatives is that they identify with the country and its traditions, and want to protect them. They are people who value the liberty to live their own lives as they see fit. I suppose that they (we, I'm one of them) might indeed be said to fear the kind of social-intellectual-ethnic changes that the "liberal" elites are always trying to force on the rest of us, whether we want them or not.
Reply
#5
Syne Offline
(Nov 26, 2017 06:37 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: Conservativism is basically a politics of fear. Fear of blacks, fear of gays, fear of strong women, fear of muslims, fear of immigrants, fear of big government, fear of intellectuals, fear of poverty, fear of atheists, fear of liberals, you name it. Give them a vallium and they all become Michael Moore. lol!

Leftism is the politics of hate. Hate of blacks, gays, strong women, immigrants, intellectuals, the poor, atheists, etc. that just don't agree with them.

The link to small amygdala and PTSD may explain why leftists often try to avoid intellectual debate with ad hominems like "bigot", "racist", and "homophobe". They lack basic coping skills and must seek avoidance and defensive hate.
Reply
#6
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:Leftism is the politics of hate. Hate of blacks, gays, strong women, immigrants, intellectuals, the poor, atheists, etc. that just don't agree with them.

How many blacks, gays, strong women, immigrants, intellectuals, poor, and atheists don't agree with the tenets of liberalism? Give me a round number so I can laugh at it.

Quote:Women fear being without a husband-surrogate to support them.

They do? I don't know any women who live in fear of having no husband to support them. Generally they just support themselves with their own careers.

Quote:Blacks fear living in a white majority country.

I've never heard of that. I think they just fear racists.

Quote:Gays fear straights.

I'm gay and don't fear straights. Why should I? Some of my best friends are straight.

Quote:Jews fear being a religious minority.

I doubt it. They're probably quite used to it by now.
Reply
#7
Syne Offline
(Nov 26, 2017 07:08 PM)Yazata Wrote:
(Nov 26, 2017 06:37 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: Conservativism is basically a politics of fear.

Isn't that true of all politics? All politics can be depicted in terms of fear: who fears what, and where they look for protection.

Blacks fear living in a white majority country. Gays fear straights. Jews fear being a religious minority. Women fear being without a husband-surrogate to support them. Millenials fear having to get a job and having to support themselves.  

What typifies American-style social-"liberals" is that just about every one of them fears their average fellow citizens. (A liberal is a New Yorker or a San Franciscan who would be more comfortable in Paris than red-state Middle America.) And they look to a strong aggressive federal government for protection against the things that they fear. That's what makes them skeptical about democracy (they denounce popular sovereignty as "populism", as if it was something bad) and always seem more in favor of aristocratic rule by elites (government employees, celebrities, university professors, the news media), those like themselves who believe that they know better than everyone else about what the little-people should think and how they should conduct their lives.  

Fear of their fellows is also why they seem to constantly be at war against the country's history and its traditions. It's why they so passionately want to destroy everything that America once was, everything that Americans once believed in, everything that made America great, and replace all of it with... something else. New values, new ideals, new social organization... new people. Everything idealistic and utopian of course.

What typifies conservatives is that they identify with the country and its traditions, and want to protect them. They are people who value the liberty to live their own lives as they see fit. I suppose that they (we, I'm one of them) might indeed be said to fear the kind of social-intellectual-ethnic changes that the "liberal" elites are always trying to force on the rest of us, whether we want them or not.

Absolutely. According to Jonathan Haidt, liberal fears just tend to center around the virtues of care and fairness. Since they don't generally care about patriotism, law, or modesty (loyalty, authority, and sanctity), they just display exaggerated fears about things like Obamacare, welfare, profiling, equality, etc.. The pinnacle of these being big government, that can both care for them and solve any inequalities for them. It's no coincidence that care and fairness are the virtues most taught to young children. It takes an adult to appreciate ingroup loyalty and survival, the need for law and order, personal freedom and responsibility, and the sanctity of things like life. Hence people become more conservative as they mature. Some just never mature.

Leftists don't care about borders, national sovereignty, national security, the intent of the law, the family unit, accountability, liberty, etc.. They fear their neighbor might be allowed to carry a gun, but want to indiscriminately import immigrants (new neighbors) with abandon. They fear police, but only want them armed. They fear a loss of freedom, but only the freedom to kill human life.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Article Lonely people’s divergent thoughts may contribute to feeling "alone in crowded room" C C 1 85 Apr 11, 2023 10:35 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist
  Liberals & conservatives differ on meaning of "diversity" - different understandings C C 0 61 Jul 24, 2021 06:45 AM
Last Post: C C
  Invisibilia: An Experiment Helps One Woman See The World In A New Way C C 0 551 Jul 8, 2016 07:33 PM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)