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Political Viewpoints Linked To Fear
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Sep 19, 2008 05:02 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:In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, hey republicans...
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BOO!
Hahahahaha.
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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: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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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, 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: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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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.
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.
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: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: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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