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Political Viewpoints Linked To Fear
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Sep 19, 2008 04:02 PM
from the scaredy-cats-and-retards-the-new-political-parties dept.
from the scaredy-cats-and-retards-the-new-political-parties dept.
Pentagram writes "Researchers writing in Science report that the political orientation of test subjects who have strong views is linked to how easy they are to startle. They found that subjects who were more fearful were more likely to have right wing views, such as being in favor of capital punishment and higher defense budgets. The researchers suggest that this psychological difference is why it is so difficult to change people's minds in political arguments."
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In related news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Easily startled people carry guns, so be careful out there!
Sure, But Only the Paranoids Survive (Score:5, Interesting)
A November 2007 Gallup poll [gallup.com] reveals that Republicans by a wide margin across all age, gender, income, and education levels report significantly better mental health than Democrats and Independents.
As we observe in nature, only the paranoids survive. The others are just nuts. LOL.
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Re:Sure, But Only the Paranoids Survive (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sure, But Only the Paranoids Survive (Score:5, Insightful)
A November 2007 Gallup poll reveals that Republicans by a wide margin across all age, gender, income, and education levels report significantly better mental health than Democrats and Independents.
Just to be clear. They rate their own mental health as excellent. They believe they're the ones who are sane and everybody else is crazy.
PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls.
It appears Democrats at least have an open mind to the possibility of being wrong.
-[d]-
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gun control (Score:5, Insightful)
That makes me wonder:
Are fearful people more likely to be against gun control or for it? I can see fear playing a part in both sides of the issue.
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Re:gun control (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly why I think this study is totally bogus. They're basically assuming that the current Democrat and Republican political platforms are 1) the only two possible viewpoints people could have, and 2) basically unchanging ideals. There's tons of people who don't agree with either, or agree with parts of both parties' platforms. These platforms aren't the way they are because people believe in them; they have arisen out of political expediency. For instance, why are the Republicans in favor of religious fundamentalism, foreign wars, and deregulation of business? Because these things actually go together? No. This came about because the power brokers in the Republican Party panders to religious fundamentalists in order to get votes, so they can get elected and pursue their economic agenda which benefits their wealthy friends.
The Democrats aren't much different. They pander to poor people and people afraid of guns with promises of welfare and gun control, so they can get votes and enact laws (like the DMCA) which benefit their wealthy friends and campaign donors.
These parties would happily change their platforms if it netted them more votes, as long as they could continue enriching themselves and their wealthy friends. These politicians are sociopaths and don't actually care about society, their country, the people they serve, or whether their laws are right or wrong. Why else do you think Republicans, who are always bashing gay people, are frequently discovered (in airport restrooms, no less) to be gay themselves?
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Re:In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, hey republicans...
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...
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BOO!
Hahahahaha.
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Fear leads to hate... (Score:4, Funny)
Hate leads to Anger... Anger leads to killing George Lucas for some really bad movies.
Re:Fear leads to hate... (Score:5, Funny)
So, hate is good?
Wallstreet 2. The role of Gordon Gecko is revised by Jar Jar Binks. When asked for comment on initial reaction to the casting, George Lucas claimed "people just don't understand the range of an actor like Jar Jar."
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So in other words... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah this discussion is going to go well...
Re:So in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Strictly speaking, fear doesn't make one a coward. Acting only on that fear is what makes one a coward.
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Re:So in other words... (Score:5, Funny)
in other words, Republicans are cowards.
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Re:So in other words... (Score:5, Funny)
in other words, Republicans are cowards.
No, they only act on other people's fears.
But let's not put this into a political debate and get back on topic. Wait a minute...
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NPR has the scoop (Score:5, Interesting)
The researchers commented on this situation on NPR this morning. Yes, you could potentially see Republicans that way. But the researchers suggested that you could also see Democrats as "lacking in a basic sense of self-preservation."
The researchers went on to say that they don't believe that either label is appropriate. Rather, they hope both sides will use this information to better understand one another.
From my own perspective, I feel that it's also worth pointing out that both sides tend to follow their ideals. It's not like Republicans tend to avoid military service after demanding it, and it's not like Democrats seek military service due to a lack of self-preservation. The two sides merely react to certain stimulus, but the actual psychology of the drive is obviously more complex. Which leads me to my next point.
Many of the other researchers interviewed by NPR were skeptical of these findings. Their belief was that the study failed to show that these responses were set biologically and not by environmental stimuli. So in fact, it may be that Republicans are more suspicious of attacks than Democrats due to their environmental training. Which certainly seems more likely than dividing people up into "cowards" and "idiot-savants".
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Re:NPR has the scoop (Score:5, Insightful)
Do a search on:
"The Power of Nightmares..."
Its six hours long, but well worth the time.
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Re:NPR has the scoop (Score:5, Interesting)
I would not argue that voting against something that concerns you is a good idea; however, their fear is SO misplaced (and racist, or at least xenophobic), that it certainly paints them as uneducated and ridiculous.
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Re:NPR has the scoop (Score:4, Informative)
I vote out of anger (of what 'the other side' will do or has done) rather than out of fear.
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Re:NPR has the scoop (Score:5, Insightful)
Need I go on about the various horrors that the wealth I make for 2hours and 20minutes out of every day enables? Here is a novel thought, why don't they not take my money and I can give it directly to the poor children. Why does the government need a cut?
Here, please educate yourself [jim.com]
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Re:NPR has the scoop (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:NPR has the scoop (Score:5, Insightful)
Aristotle says the virtues are always midpoints between extremes, and the extremes are vices.
The opposite of cowardice isn't courage, it's rashness. Courage is the temperate midpoint between the vice of cowardice and the vice of rashness. Courage accepts danger but acts, which makes it different from either extreme.
Rashness and cowardice are the kinds of superficial opposites that have many inner similarities. The coward fears to act, and the fool fears to think.
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I guess the old saying is true, then... (Score:5, Interesting)
"A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged" - I guess the message there is supposed to be "having been mugged and now being familiar with the true nature of the world around them, they learned that the ideals they formerly embraced were foolishly misguided" but I always read it more as "having been mugged they allowed fear to take over their lives, replacing their sense of justice with a more Machiavellian approach to the world."
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Re:I guess the old saying is true, then... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that's a naive interpretation of the saying. In this case "mugged" tends to be a metaphor for "negative experience". A negative experience does sometimes teach people to be a little harsher.
I know I tried a hands-off approach with administrating a web forum for a quite a while, and quickly found that a few disruptive members were driving away all the actual contributors to the discussions. I tried being reasonable and applying polite warnings. I mean, we were all adults, right? The only thing that happened was that these users got good at skirting the edge of the rules. They'd cross the line regularly, but tried not to do enough to warrant a perma-ban. They got especially good at pushing the buttons of other users such that otherwise contributing members became part of the problem. Then these users were able to play a game of public appeal when the mods pointed a finger at them.
In the end, there was only one solution. I clamped down. I hated doing it, I really did. But I managed to drive those users out, keep careful controls on the direction of threads, and attract many of our lost users to return. The community came together and really helped the site(s) it supported to thrive after that. I initially got some blame for the bans, but most users ended up thankful after only a short period of time. (Which I honestly didn't expect.)
I eventually relaxed the controls a bit, but I still found I had to keep vigilant or else someone would show up to attempt to ruin the forums again.
What I'm getting at is that Republicans aren't always wrong in those respects. Sometimes control and structure ARE necessary. It's just difficult for them to always know when. There's a fairly good talk from a psychologist on TED TV who echos these thoughts [ted.com].
On the flip-side, I think the recent issue over deregulation shows that Republicans do try to relax controls, sometimes with disastrous effects. Which simply reinforces their ideas of control and structure.
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Re:I guess the old saying is true, then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's not a straw-man argument, it's an illustration of a fallacy. A well-known fallacy, in fact -- the fallacy of compromise. While some sort of compromise is very often useful or effective, it does not follow logically that a compromise between two arbitrary suggestions is necessarily superior. In many cases, a "compromise solution" makes no sense; in others, it's clearly not the "fair" choice.
There is no innate "middle ground". If you define it as a "reasonable compromise", you're imposing a particular person's arbitrary sense of "reasonable" anyway.
Anyway, yes. Fallacy of compromise.
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Re:I guess the old saying is true, then... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I guess the old saying is true, then... (Score:5, Interesting)
I always counter by saying, "Yeah and a liberal is a conservative that's been abused by the police."
And historically... I wonder who has a higher body count, government goons or mere muggers.
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Re:So in other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's entirely possible to be extremely to the economic left and still be every bit if not more authoritarian than the Republican party tends to be. Just look at the USSR under Stalin.
It's also entirely possible to be extremely to the economic right and be very non-authoritarian. Probably the best example of this would be the American Libertarian party which has a strong free market belief as well as a very hands-off approach to government involvement in the personal lives of people.
Check out http://www.politicalcompass.org/ [politicalcompass.org] for a better explanation and to see where different political parties from different parts of the world are at. I've found a lot of interesting things on that site. The most interesting to me is that the vast majority of European governments aren't too far off of the US Democratic party, despite what a lot of European posters on
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Re:So in other words... (Score:5, Informative)
Republicans are cowards.
Not necessarily. However, they are willing to give up freedoms for security and social stability is more important protections of minorities.
TED had a very good talk about psychology of left vs. right [ted.com] without necessarily putting down one or the other.
Basically, what they found out was that Liberals have two main axes of morality: Harm and Fairness.
Conservatives have five: Harm, Fairness, In-Group, Authority, Purity.
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Re:So in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think acting out of a perceived need of self preservation is how I would define cowardice.
No, but being too quick to "perceive" such a need -- that's cowardice.
(Over-re)acting out of all proportion to the severity of the threat -- that's cowardice.
Letting it skew your priorities to the point that you neglect to protect yourself against other (less dramatic but equally or more important) dangers -- that's not only cowardice, it's stupid and makes you less safe.
Allowing your rights to be violated whenever the administration says "Grant us this expanded executive power, or we'll let the terrorists kill you" -- that's cowardice.
Does that clear anything up?
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Re:So in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except when you percieve innocent things, like gay marriage, as a threat to your self preservation.
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Re:So in other words... (Score:5, Funny)
Let's break down the numbers. First, for every male gay couple out there, there are theoretically 2 more women out there looking for a guy to be with. Considering the world's population is pretty close to being 50-50 m/f, anything that tips the balance in our favor is pure goodness, especially among the
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Re:So in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
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more detail... (Score:5, Interesting)
And I'm sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
So Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess it's also what gives the conservatives (small c) that weird advantage in polls- their always more likely to be 'in tune' with the masses, because their opinions are always more likely to have been formed off the back of the most recent scare story.
Re:So Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm often doubtful about these sorts of psychology stories, but this one actually makes a certain sort of sense to me. In the traditional meaning of the word, being "conservative" means that you dislike quick and drastic changes. The idea that there would be a connection between disliking change quick changes (moving from the known to the unknown) and being generally more fearful and easily startled doesn't seem strange or surprising.
Also, the connections between being more fearful, wanting a strong army, and wanting to be "tough on crime" seem pretty clear. You could have convinced me without research.
On the other hand, none of this necessarily means that these opinions are wrong. Even if they're more fearful, it's not clear that it means they're "too fearful". I'm not trying to argue that they are or that they aren't, but just suggesting that we all try to avoid jumping to conclusions. (I'm also not accusing the parent post of claiming that it means they're wrong)
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yeah right (wing) (Score:4, Insightful)
I think being startled has much more to do with the ability to concentrate than with fear.
I am the most startled person I know... If I am concentrating on something, I make a total vacuum, I block all my senses... if at that point I am distracted by someone I will jump a foot in the air and scream. I don't consider myself fearful though.
Right wing in the US has, for most of its existence, been isolationist and thus favored less military rather than more. I don't believe there's any connection.
All in all, this research is probably crap.
Re:yeah right (wing) (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the article. They used 46 people with strong political views. Need I say more?
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Re:yeah right (wing) (Score:5, Funny)
More
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It goes both ways (Score:5, Interesting)
This definitely affects Democrats, too. My father-in-law is a staunch democrat, and he's also very anxious all the time. It affects his political views because he worries greatly about things like health care and such, things which he thinks the gov't can protect us from.
There's a well-known saying: "A Democrat is a Republican who's been arrested, and a Republican is a Democrat who's been mugged."
I know that the saying works for me, too. My wife and I were the victims of gang violence (well, just some inner-city middle schoolers who broke our car window while we were in the car, causing my wife's face to bleed) and I definitely think it caused me to lean to the right, and more recently I was arrested (charges later dismissed) which caused me to not trust the police and lean to the left.
Now, I don't think I'm really on either side. The police aren't going to really do too much to you as long as you don't make their lives difficult, and I think I can handle myself and my family if the whole economy implodes. Politicians usually don't actually make you safer. Good neighbors, family, and friends do.
Fear? Perhaps misweighted utility fxn? (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems to me that much of the current war on * sham is based on irrational fears. It's well known that humans have difficulty understanding on a qualitative level very low and very high probabilities.
So, for example, people might be far more concerned about being killed in a 9/11 repeat (5000 people) rather than in an automobile accident (~20,000 p/yr), despite the latter being far more of a risk to them.
Of course there are reasons to fear the former more than the latter that are reasonable, such as placing more value on how one dies than if (I don't consider this unreasonable; I'd rather be shot by a stranger than my best friend)
Conservative =Protective? (Score:4, Interesting)
FTA: "decided to test the idea that liberal and conservative (or "protective") social beliefs are related to individuals' sensitivity to threat."
So really what they tested was whether people who have more protective attitudes toward others react more to fear stimulus. Well, isn't that obvious? Correlation OR causation, it seems a pretty direct link that if you are afraid of something, you'd want to protect against it, and if you are afraid of more things, you'd want to protect against more things, and if the intensity of your fear is higher, the level of protection would increase.
So how on Earth did they translate that into "conservative" political views?
People vs. Things (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to the physiological response, a more complete description might be "fight or flight", as Fear and Aggression are closely linked. In addition, I've noticed that Conservatives tend to be afraid of People, while Liberals tend to be afraid of Things.
To clarify, I mean that Conservatives seem to focus on threats with a human face -- foreign terrorists and rogue dictators without; criminals, illegal immigrants, and gays within (gays are a particularly interesting example of "threat", due to an odd mix of cultural and psychological reasons, instead of being any threat to life/liberty/livelihood). This leads to harsher law enforcement and big military budgets.
While Liberals seem to focus on systematic dangers, like pollution or global warming. This leads to lots of attention to things like pesticides, endocrine disruptors, and genetically modified organisms; resulting in lots of regulation and governmental intervention.
Re:Fear? Look in the mirror (Score:5, Funny)
No, MY beliefs are valid, not yours! Yours are silly and smell bad!
Invoke Godwin's law and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
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Re:Fear? Look in the mirror (Score:4, Interesting)
What if I think being politically motivated at all is a mental illness?
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Re:Fear? Look in the mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about fear of competing ideas, you Libs need a mirror. Variations of this story appear here and on every libtard site every few weeks now, claiming conservative ideas are the result of mental defect. Because if you can keep that idea formly in yer heads you can justify the childish antics you guys normally do when exposed to a different set of ideas, shout it down. Because if the other side is mentally ill there isn't a reason to even allow them to speak.
To a liberal, 'diversity' is defined as all colors, gender identities and faiths all thinking exactly alike. Because the one thing liberalism can't tolerate is reasoned debate since the whole system is based on emotion.
No, I don't think liberalism is a mental illness in return. I think it is evil. You guys have free will, you chose the wrong side. Of course you convince yourselves that notions like good and evil are outdated because few will admit to serving evil so you solve that problem by handwaving the whole question away.
Wow, your sane, calm, and carefully-reasoned response has totally convinced me.
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Re:Democrats are for defeating, no compromising wi (Score:5, Insightful)
If we can open that argument up I'm convinced it will be as easy to convince the undecided that the core of the Democratic party is indeed evil as it was to win the argument the Soviet Union was utterly Evil.
Unless you believe that the core of the Republican party is also evil, I'm afraid I can't support your position.
I'm younger than you are, so I missed the Cold War scare that you're referring to. Consequently, I don't have an irrational fear and hatred of the USSR drilled into me, so telling me that the Democratic party is as evil as Russia was in Reagan's day just doesn't make the emotional connection you were going for.
I can see that if you start with the premise that Cold War era Russia was inherently evil, and the Democratic party promotes some of the same ideas that were a cornerstone of Russian society, then the Democratic party must be evil because those ideas must be evil. However, please try to understand that many of us do not take this premise to be a given. If you believe socialized healthcare is evil, you'll have to argue the case for why it is evil, not just draw a connection to Russia. If you believe a so-called "progressive" tax system (in which wealthier people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes) is evil, you'll have to explain why it's evil. If you believe that charging suspected terrorists with crimes and prosecuting them in a court of law, rather than simply detaining them without charge indefinitely and subjecting them to torture, is evil, you'll have to explain why. If you believe requiring a warrant in order to eavesdrop on someone's phone calls is evil, make your case.
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Re:Pssst, c'mere... (Score:4, Funny)
AIGH!!!
goddammit I spilt my coffee again...
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Re:Pssst, c'mere... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Point and counterpoint (Score:4, Interesting)
On a more rational (than my last post) note, how is it a defect to be more easily afraid? Fear is a GOOD thing when one is facing a real threat; it causes one to take actions to defend oneself (such as increasing military spending or reaching for a rock, as the case may be)
You could just as reasonably argue that liberals irrationally shrug off threats that are dangerous to them, and that they are incorrect, or make a more fair argument that people who hold extremist beliefs fair to accurately gauge risk.
Even if it is the liberals who are right and conservatives who are wrong here I hardly think you can call this a "disease", more a different worldview.
I'm a lot more scared of being abducted and held without trial by my own government than dying in a tiny terrorist attack; this is no more or less rational than someone with the opposite fears, and both are less rational than someone who is afraid of cars because of the risk of death.
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Re:Fear (Score:4, Interesting)
Since the US is the leading user of recreational drugs in the world ( the amount of money US citizens spend on illegal substances dwarfs the budgets of most countries), we should really take illegal drug use into account when we interpret most American social behavior.
The right wingers tend to be split into two big groups: The wealthier old money types and the poorer rural types.
The left wingers are wealthier intellectuals and poorer hipsters.
The wealthy right wingers can afford more cocaine and the poorer use the most popular rural drug Meth. These substances make them jumpier and more paranoid.
The left wingers tend top have the pot smokers, so they are more mellow.
</sarcasm>
Maybe the fear or lack of it follows from the behavior?
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