Acceptable Behaviour and Political Leanings

[Ka-El]

You are the graph guy

[Poindexter]

Leftists are about feelings; the right is more about facts.

Ironically I know for a fact that this is how you feel.

[MrSandman]

The left seems to celebrate death. That is not to say all leftists do or that many right-wingers don't either, it's merely a general trend I see. Whenever there's a controversial topic, the left almost always sides with death. Then when they protest, the thank God for death.

A generalization of the highest degree. This is anecdotal (at best), at worst it is ridiculously misguided and a result of your own interpretation of studies involving voter emotional engagement. Kudos for citing your links, but a quick scan shows zero evidence of why "the left seems to celebrate death". Open to discussion if I missed it in your links

[f/22]

Well, since Glacier brought this interesting study up . . ..

The study itself:

The Big Five Personality
Traits in the Political Arena
Alan S. Gerber, Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty,
and Conor M. Dowling
Yale University, Department of Political Science, Institution for Social and Policy Studies,
New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8209; email: [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

http://www.matchism.org/refs/Gerber_201 ... itical.pdf

And

Quickly measure your Big 5 personality traits

This short, free test shows you where you fall on each of the Big 5 factors of personality. . . ..

http://www.truity.com/view/tests/big-five-personality

It seems there's more than one way to have your political DNA tested.

Be brave now.
Fun for all.

[neilsimon]

...
Leftists are about feelings; the right is more about facts. There is nothing wrong with this; we need both (without feelings we become too cold), and yes, there is a spectrum and overlap, but in general that's how it works. For example, I posted a fact, and your first response "liked" by two of your fellow feelings based leftists was to deny a simple fact.

Can you provide evidence that those on the right are more fact driven than those on the left?
It certainly doesn't fit with the fact that most scientists are left-wing. Nor does it fit with the fact that Democrats place a higher value on institutions of education and Republicans place a higher value on religious institutions. These are facts.

[f/22]

Hi Glacier, I got my results on the Big 5, so, please, how do I place them into an applicable liberal - conservative context?

Oh, and how will knowing the results help 'us' to get along?

[f/22]

Ok, from the article that Glacier posted earlier, here’s what I got for 'politically' interpreting the Big 5 test that I posted above.

The article:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolic ... -election/

The Big 5 test:

https://www.truity.com/view/tests/big-five-personality

So, score high on:

Openness – liberal

Conscientious – conservative

Extroversion - liberal
.
Agreeableness - liberal

Neuroticism – liberal

Someone please check my work.

But I’m still wondering about how this info will help ‘us’ to get along.

[neilsimon]

I don't mean to sound too harsh. There is bad and good on both sides. The bad tends to be at the extremes.

As for facts, yes, people deny the facts they don't like on both sides for the most part, so there is strong overlap here. There's a difference on average, but you can't tell how factual or caring or racist for that matter someone is by their political views.

True, but you can more readily tell someone's political views based on their attitudes. For instance, I suspect that a well trained psychologist could, with little difficulty and a high level of accuracy guess someone's political affiliation from a dozen or so questions about attitudes.

(That reminds me, Neilsimon made a statement of faith about racism and political persuasion, which I'd like to hear a defense of beyond a hunch.)

I was actually going to write a proper response, but the fact is that it's simple to google for correlation between conservatism and prejudice (or similar terms). There are a few papers out there you can read and I've yet to find one which suggests that there is an inverse correlation, but I've read plenty which claim a significant correlation. If you can find ones which are peer reviewed in a respectable journal and does claim no correlation or an inverse one, please let me know. The problem is that I also suspect you're going to try to argue stuff around things like claiming that just because someone doesn't favour inter-racial dating doesn't make them racist and honestly I don't have time for that.

People who are high in openess and agreeableness are oriented toward the left. People who are oriented to the right are high in conscientiousness. Again, both are needed for a functioning society: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolic ... -election/

It's an interesting paper, but without methodology, sample size, etc. it is a relatively useless one. I also noticed that he standardised around 0, which is interesting if rather poor decision to make, especially if non experts are going to be reading it. Yes, knowing how far outside the mean a group lie can be useful, but this data is being used to compare groups, so we are less interested in deviation from the mean and more in the absolute values, ideally normalised between 0 and 1. The other thing is that the values don't appear to be weighted to keep deviations normally distributed. This means that it is impossible to say that Conservative supporters are significantly more conscientious than Labour supporters are agreeable. In fact, it might be such that Conservative supporters might consider themselves extremely close minded, and only slightly more conscientious (though I doubt it). The large number of non-significant values suggests a rather small sample size. The lack of error-margins is a problem since based on the small sample size, they are probably rather large indeed, making it such that much of the graph is useless for making comparisons (for instance comparing Labour and Conservative supporter extroversion). The author also lists the source of the data (a very large site with lots of data sets), but it is unreasonable to try to recreate his results. I'd give this a failing grade if any of my students had handed it to me.
Now, let me be clear, I'm not saying the results are wrong, or even that a naive reading of them is, but rather that the author does little to inspire any confidence in the results.

I find the Big 5 test to be rather too narrow, using far too much self-declaration around items which may not be independent. For instance, believing that you are open-minded could be a result of having a neurotic personality, or believing that you are conscientious could be a symptom of having a closed-mind, etc. I haven't seen any evidence that there was or is any attempt to control for such lack of independence and without such independence, with self-declaration, it makes it very hard to show actual value in the predicted behaviour. For instance, it has repeatedly been shown to be a poor indicator of job performance, which considering that actual conscientiousness (rather than a belief in one's own conscientiousness) should be a good indicator of job performance, shows that the measure is somewhat flawed as a tool for prediction. I suspect, but have neither the time nor inclination to prove, that the Big 5 test is at least somewhat a reflection of values and attitudes rather than a measure of behaviour and experiences (e.g. people who value conscientiousness claim that they are more so, even if not). Anyway, that's just my pet theory (and my problem with pure self declared behaviour studies).

[Glacier]

I was actually going to write a proper response, but the fact is that it's simple to google for correlation between conservatism and prejudice (or similar terms). There are a few papers out there you can read and I've yet to find one which suggests that there is an inverse correlation, but I've read plenty which claim a significant correlation. If you can find ones which are peer reviewed in a respectable journal and does claim no correlation or an inverse one, please let me know. The problem is that I also suspect you're going to try to argue stuff around things like claiming that just because someone doesn't favour inter-racial dating doesn't make them racist and honestly I don't have time for that.

How do you explain the south becoming republican as they became less and less racist?

[neilsimon]

I was actually going to write a proper response, but the fact is that it's simple to google for correlation between conservatism and prejudice (or similar terms). There are a few papers out there you can read and I've yet to find one which suggests that there is an inverse correlation, but I've read plenty which claim a significant correlation. If you can find ones which are peer reviewed in a respectable journal and does claim no correlation or an inverse one, please let me know. The problem is that I also suspect you're going to try to argue stuff around things like claiming that just because someone doesn't favour inter-racial dating doesn't make them racist and honestly I don't have time for that.

How do you explain the south becoming republican as they became less and less racist?

Racism is still very common, especially in attitude, if not in overt behaviour, and since attitudes tend to drive voting preferences, racism is very commonly a driver in picking representatives. It takes generations for such attitudes to die out. This is most obvious in that the South switched from being a Democrat president supporting group to being a Republican one after LBJ passed a Civil Rights Act in 1964. Ever since, with one anomalous exception, they have basically voted for Republican presidents en masse.
It would be fair to say that until the 1960s there was little difference between the Republicans and Democrats when it came to racism, and it might even be fair to say that the Republicans were the less racist of the two for much of the time. The South naturally turned Democrat because of the dislike for the party of Lincoln, who least we forget, lead a war against them. Since 1968, after the CRA, the South has been moving away from Democrat Senators and Representatives, and 2008 was the last straw for many as Obama was seen as a step too far.
While it is over simplifying things to claim that racism completely dominates the political system in the South, it is certainly a huge factor. So, while racist attitudes have somewhat declined in Southern states, it still is hugely prevalent. The Democrats have been trying to move away from their racist past, and have therefore hugely alienated many of their supporters. At the same time, the Republicans have actively sought the support of the South and have therefore been increasing in power there, even if it does sometimes come with more than a whiff of racism.
At least that is my understanding of it. Please feel free to point me at more complete knowledge if you find something that I'm wrong about.

[I see what you did]

How do you explain the south becoming republican as they became less and less racist?

you are horribly misinformed!!

read up on the Southern Strategy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

In American politics, the southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3] As the Civil Rights Movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South to the Republican Party that had traditionally supported the Democratic Party.[4] It also helped push the Republican Party much more to the right.[4]

[f/22]

Wow! Right-wingers who use abstract art to create their protest signs may be revealing how they might not be intolerant people after all.

Reconstruing Intolerance: Abstract Thinking Reduces Conservatives' Prejudice Against Nonnormative Groups

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10. ... 7611433877

(May require login to access the full study)


Study 1

Method

Participants. Sixty-three participants (44.4% male, 55.6% female; mean age = 35.73 years, SD = 13.58) were recruited online and took part in this study in exchange for a chance to win a gift certificate (pg. 757).

Study 2

Method

Participants. Sixty-four participants (46.9% male, 53.1% female; mean age = 34.72 years, SD = 13.32) were recruited online and took part in this study in exchange for a chance to win a gift certificate (pg. 759).

Study 3

Method

Participants. One hundred sixty-eight participants (36.9% male, 63.1% female; mean age = 35.95 years, SD = 13.04) were recruited online and took part in this study in exchange for a chance to win a gift certificate (pg. 760).

[f/22]

Yeah, the above was totally tongue-in-cheek because of my low opinion of the sampling technique that the researchers used.

And this may be another ‘wishful thinking’ therapy project by Designer, Alicia Strzyzynska, but I think it’s kinda cool.

http://alicjastrzyzynska.com/portfolio_ ... -handbook/

[Glacier]

Racism is still very common, especially in attitude, if not in overt behaviour, and since attitudes tend to drive voting preferences, racism is very commonly a driver in picking representatives. It takes generations for such attitudes to die out. This is most obvious in that the South switched from being a Democrat president supporting group to being a Republican one after LBJ passed a Civil Rights Act in 1964. Ever since, with one anomalous exception, they have basically voted for Republican presidents en masse.
It would be fair to say that until the 1960s there was little difference between the Republicans and Democrats when it came to racism, and it might even be fair to say that the Republicans were the less racist of the two for much of the time. The South naturally turned Democrat because of the dislike for the party of Lincoln, who least we forget, lead a war against them. Since 1968, after the CRA, the South has been moving away from Democrat Senators and Representatives, and 2008 was the last straw for many as Obama was seen as a step too far.
While it is over simplifying things to claim that racism completely dominates the political system in the South, it is certainly a huge factor. So, while racist attitudes have somewhat declined in Southern states, it still is hugely prevalent. The Democrats have been trying to move away from their racist past, and have therefore hugely alienated many of their supporters. At the same time, the Republicans have actively sought the support of the South and have therefore been increasing in power there, even if it does sometimes come with more than a whiff of racism.
At least that is my understanding of it. Please feel free to point me at more complete knowledge if you find something that I'm wrong about.

Thank you for that response. I consider this a good logical argument. Now, I wanted to do a little research before responding, but the wife told me that I better change the starter in her car or else, so it took me a while to get back to this.

Okay, so I've only looked at one random state so far. I'm perfectly willing to accept your explanation if the data matches the theory, but so far it has not. It seems that the Big Switch occurred long before 1968. Rather, it occurred in 1948, the year my old man was born. Damn, he sure had an impact on the world!

In all seriousness, what happened then to change the result!? I have to run, so no time to Google.

[f/22]

One last nail to drive in trying to illustrate how desperate the efforts are when it comes to combating prejudice.

The American Society of Trial Consultants Foundation published a version of the ‘Abstract Thinking’ study (above) as a means towards temporarily mitigating prejudice when it threatens to influence trial outcomes.

http://www.thejuryexpert.com/wp-content ... stract.pdf