Question Authority -

[kyburg]

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

OH RLY.

Nah, the folks in Berkeley don't have a axe to grind or anything.

It's an interesting study on 95 subjects, hardly double-blind and where was this done again? *snaps fingers* OH YEAH.

Confident, resilient folks comes in every stripe known to man - the rigid, uncomfortable, insecure ones? Extremists of every caliber.

Conservative or Liberal. Bah. What a crock. Like you're completely one or the other - and your behavior dictates the decision, not the content.

Dumb as dead cats.

But that's just my opinion - and I encourage you to question it.

Comments

[dudemungus.livejournal.com]

Politics has used science for it's own ends for a while now--remember a study a few back, showing stock brokers and corporate types are more likely to be sociopaths? Or a study showing altruism is nonexistant, and anybody who claims to be compassionate to the suffering of others is just suffering from displaced guilt?

Or even in more extreme cases, how African descendants are naturally stupid because they have smaller heads? Or homosexuality is a curable nuerosis, not a sexual orientation?

THe one thing the study fails to take into account, and it's big variable--how many people are the same political slant now as when they were kids? My political leanings have run the gamut from extreme right (As a youth) to extreme left (tewnties) to just left of centre to right of centre, depending on the issue.(Now) I don't trust people of any stripe who have never changed their views--it means they aren't thinking. And you don't have to be a scientist to come up with a name for that.