Is Conservatism a Mental Illness?

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Permalink Reply by Dave Gibbs on April 10, 2009 at 10:15am

Perhaps you are imposing your simplistic cliches and stereotypes!

Permalink Reply by Adam Yale on April 10, 2009 at 10:53am

Reminds me of an article I read a while back:

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

In a simple experiment reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

The results show "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style," said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research.

Participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very liberal" to "very conservative." They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.

M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.

Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.

Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.

Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict.

Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

"There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science," said Sulloway, who has written about the history of science and has studied behavioral differences between conservatives and liberals.

Lead author David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, cautioned that the study looked at a narrow range of human behavior and that it would be a mistake to conclude that one political orientation was better. The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation, he said.

Political orientation, he noted, occurs along a spectrum, and positions on specific issues, such as taxes, are influenced by many factors, including education and wealth. Some liberals oppose higher taxes and some conservatives favor abortion rights.

Still, he acknowledged that a meeting of the minds between conservatives and liberals looked difficult given the study results.

"Does this mean liberals and conservatives are never going to agree?" Amodio asked. "Maybe it suggests one reason why they tend not to get along."

link: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,598233...

Permalink Reply by John R.(Dick) Troll on April 10, 2009 at 11:04am

Adam:
This is SI at its best. A thought gets tossed into the arena. And someone constructively builds on that thought. Thanks for helping to restore my faith in SI.

Permalink Reply by Dave Gibbs on April 10, 2009 at 11:34am

As one kind of conservative, I can work in ambiguity and suspension, while not losing substance.

This type of thing is non-sense. The Bolshies used to use this type of argument to put people away in the old Soviet.

There are all kinds of personalities across the political spectrum. Even the lead author suggests this.

If you want to start an 1848 website Mr. Troll, please start your own. You are shooting FIREY arrows!

Pat has worked hard here to develop an excellent social/business network that includes people from all parts of the spectrum.

Permalink Reply by Kyle Capron on April 10, 2009 at 10:56am

Hold on just a second. You are telling me because I can think and provide for myself that I am neurotic and dogmatic. HA. I pity the person that sits back and waits for someone else to take care of them. What is so great about being ambiguitous that we sould tolirate it. I would rather you make a stand for your convictions, and stay with them(even if I do not agree with them) then wander all over the place like a rudderless ship. Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything. I also belive you have mistaken fear and aggression, for preparedness and self defense. Have you taken the time to research who funded these studies and what was their stated goal was?

Permalink Reply by Genie Goykhberg on April 10, 2009 at 11:11am

You sure opened the Pandora's Box, Dick!

I am in a energy work field. 98% of massage therapiests, reiki practitioners, healers etc are hard cord liberals.
Their favorite words are "peace", "love" and such. I never seen more anger and hateness expressed by people who proclaim they are nothing but Love, when they were talking about G.W.Bush. Sure looked like mad people to me - and I've been around, believe me. Few people have the experience I have.
How was it? If you are 20 and you are Republican - you dont have Heart? and If you are after 40 and you are a Democrate you dont have... WHAT?

Permalink Reply by Genie Goykhberg on April 10, 2009 at 11:12am

Oh, Brain!!!

Permalink Reply by Linda J Ranger on April 10, 2009 at 11:22am

I hope most people vote for the candidate that reflects their personal views the best...not the political label of the party. I feel that the words conservative and liberal have been demonized

Another study questioned this research group and said this of Liberalism.

Psychiatrist Confirms: Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder

As a clinical and forensic psychiatrist, Lyle Rossiter has treated over 1,500 patients and examined over 2,700 civil and criminal cases. Turning his hand to political psychopathology, the author of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness, has diagnosed an alarming percentage of the population as suffering from the grotesque form of mental derangement known by some as moonbattery.

Among Rossiter's observations:

"Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded. Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.
A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity — as liberals do. A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population — as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state — as liberals do.
The roots of liberalism — and its associated madness — can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind. When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious.
Basically liberalism is a willful failure to mature beyond adolescence that can have catastrophic consequences for society. With luck, the official diagnosis of this disease by a mental health professional will facilitate the search for a cure."


I find that the label "conservative" by the Hollywood style media through jokes and snide remarks often relates to the language the study you listed makes far too many "go with the flow" voters. We need to think for ourselves. For the most part we are a country with very conservative values but we like the idea of being part of the in crowd.

Permalink Reply by John R.(Dick) Troll on April 10, 2009 at 1:26pm

Linda:
Thanks for your comments. I(perhaps unfairly) tend to discount the views of Dr. Rossiter because he has so openly and clearly declared himself a poltical coservative whereas the other studies were conducted under circumstances where the overt views of those running the study were unknown.

Permalink Reply by Anne Johnson on April 11, 2009 at 11:40am

Well, LInda, It's nice that you like this guy, but he grossly oversimplifies liberal - I consider myself quite liberal, and his pronouncements on liberals don't fit me and my liberal friends at all. My interest is not in "impos[ing] economic and social equality on the population" to take one example, but in trying give something vaguely resembling equal opportunity to people. As a simple example, a friend of my daughter's is in a good North Central elementary school, and has 28 kids in her class in 3rd grade. My daughter, out here in Brownsburg in 3rd grade has 18 kids in her class.

(Again as just one example), improving schools, and doing everything we can to make schools in poor areas able to provide needed services to improve the education of kids is a very small investment in not spending money 10 years later putting the poorly educated adults in prison, at a cost of $30,000 to $40,000 each per each year. I suppose you could call it an attempt at social engineering. But if we don't spend it now on education (and other institutions to attempt to improve the success of kids in poor areas), we will spend orders of magnitude more a few years from now.

I would much rather spend an extra $1000 or $2000 per year per kid, and avoid putting a kid away for 10 years when he grows up at a cost of $300,000 to $400,000.

Permalink Reply by Stephen Edds on April 10, 2009 at 11:35am

I think a simple answer would be to ask if you can apply those characteristics to the late William F. Buckley or Ronald Reagan, widely considered the two greatest Conservatives of our lifetime?

I would argue that if you study any group with a preconceived notion of expected outcomes, you can indeed find those outcomes. There are a lot of self-described Conservatives that fall into the above description. I would also agree with the poster that the most intolerant and hate-filled people I have encountered are self-described liberals who not only are intolarant to any Conservative views, but apply the most hateful and broad-based stereotypes to those who disagree with them.

Don't believe me? Two words: Sarah Palin.

Palin would have been considered a feminist pioneer who was brave enough to raise a special needs child and be a mother to a pregnant teen daughter if only she were liberal. Because she was conservative, she was a monster.

Granted, this hypocracy is equal on both sides of the political spectrum, but since the OP's question involved the mental state of Conservatives, I'll answer "it depends who you study."

Permalink Reply by Joe Shoemaker on April 11, 2009 at 1:54pm

"Palin would have been considered a feminist pioneer who was brave enough to raise a special needs child and be a mother to a pregnant teen daughter if only she were liberal. Because she was conservative, she was a monster."

this is really funny...

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