Now, no one should take this personally. I mean, who's to say that fear, dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, and the need to avoid uncertainty aren't legitimate foundations upon which to base a political program, I say!
From today's Financial Times...
What makes someone a conservative?
Financial Times; Aug 20, 2003
According to a group of researchers from three US universities, uncertainty and fear create right-wingers.
The professors' paper, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition", claims to have identified a whole group of psychological factors that are closely associated with political conservatism, including fear, dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, and the need to avoid uncertainty.
Published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin, the report is a number-cruncher's dream, replete with charts and regression analyses.
Not surprisingly the research, which was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, has some conservatives hopping mad. Among the items that hit a nerve with the conservative crowd was the paper's grouping of Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh together as political conservatives.
One of the paper's authors, Jack Glaser, says conservatives shouldn't take offence. What the research shows is that conservatives "are more comfortable seeing and stating things in black and white in ways that would make liberals squirm". |
