Friday, April 13, 2012

Are conservatives lazy thinkers?

It's not uncommon for psychologists to do research into conservatism. But psychologists tend to live in a little Leftist bubble. It's doubtful if many of them have ever actually met a conservative to talk to. So their conception of what conservatives think is a rather hilarious caricature of actual conservatism.

In particular, they are thoroughly wedded to the notion that conservatives are people who oppose change. But every conservative I know has a whole list of things he would like to change in the society in which we live. And if conservatives are opposed to change, how come that all conservative-dominated legislatures have an active legislative agenda? Laws are about changing things. So what happened to the conservative opposition to change there? Why are they passing any laws at all if they don't want to change anything? The fact that it's only Leftist changes that conservatives oppose seems to be just too complex a thought for the rigid minds of Leftists.

So the poor old Leftist psychologist can't even get past first base in his research. He doesn't even know what he is studying. The idea that a preference for individual liberty and minimal government might be the lodestar for conservatives is simply unknown to him. He has certainly never read or heard a Ronald Reagan speech.

The guy below makes the usual howlers but adds another one. He says conservatives are acceptant of hierarchy. How that ties in with a preference for individual liberty and minimal government escapes me. Anyhow, just for fun below is the abstract of his paper. I guess he is studying something but who knows what it is?

Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism

By Scott Eidelman et al;



The authors test the hypothesis that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism. In Study 1, alcohol intoxication was measured among bar patrons; as blood alcohol level increased, so did political conservatism (controlling for sex, education, and political identification). In Study 2, participants under cognitive load reported more conservative attitudes than their no-load counterparts. In Study 3, time pressure increased participants’ endorsement of conservative terms. In Study 4, participants considering political terms in a cursory manner endorsed conservative terms more than those asked to cogitate; an indicator of effortful thought (recognition memory) partially mediated the relationship between processing effort and conservatism. Together these data suggest that political conservatism may be a process consequence of low-effort thought; when effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases.

SOURCE

Leftist psychologists generally seem to consider it beneath them to talk to such despised people as conservatives so form their impression of conservatism from some simplistic stereotype that has built up among them over the years, a stereotype which is almost wholly wrong. So when they think they are studying conservatism they are not.

I forwarded that view of his taxonomy to Eidelman but he simply stuck to his definition. I pointed him to my huge historical survey of what conservatism is but he offered no evidence for his view. Evidence is optional among Leftists.

And the more closely I look at his paper the more evident it becomes that it is useless. He relies, for instance, on the Kerlinger questionnaire about ideology. But what Kerlinger found was that Leftism and Rightism, far from being opposed, are actually unrelated to one-another. In other words, half of all conservatives are Leftists -- which makes no sense at all. Kerlinger had no idea of what conservatism is either.

To put my critique into psychometric terms the measures of conservatism used by Eidelman are simply not valid: They do not measure what they purport to measure.

I could go on with yet more swingeing criticisms (e.g. lack of sampling) but what's the point? Eidelman's work is clearly useless for proving anything.



Go to John Ray's Main academic menu
Go to Menu of longer writings
Go to John Ray's basic home page
Go to John Ray's pictorial Home Page
Go to Selected pictures from John Ray's blogs