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Researchers Claim To Be Able To Determine Political Leaning By How Messy You AreComments:592
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Oct 16, 2008 12:58 AM
from the dirty-liberal dept.
from the dirty-liberal dept.
According to a study to be published in The Journal of Political Psychology, you can tell someone's political affiliation by looking at the condition of their offices and bedrooms. Conservatives tend to be neat and liberals love a mess. Researchers found that the bedrooms and offices of liberals tend to be colorful and full of books about travel, ethnicity, feminism and music, along with music CDs covering folk, classic and modern rock, as well as art supplies, movie tickets and travel memorabilia. Their conservative contemporaries, on the other hand, tend to surround themselves with calendars, postage stamps, laundry baskets, irons and sewing materials. Their bedrooms and offices are well lit and decorated with sports paraphernalia and flags — especially American ones. Sam Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, says these room cues are "behavioral residue." The findings are just the latest in a series of recent attempts to unearth politics in personality, the brain and DNA. I, for one, support a woman's right to clean.
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Left and Right priorities. (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to make sense to me, conservatives in my view have always been about protecting and preserving the America's physical assets and wealth, where as liberals conversely tend to put ideals above the nation's power and prosperity.
and just for the record in case it matters to anyone. I tend to view myself a somewhat left leaning moderate.
Re:Left and Right priorities. (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, support a man's right to tell women to leave his belongings alone.
Why use dualistic generalities... (Score:3, Insightful)
The rest of the world dont use.
Trying to be social determinismts, you must use the most general and stereotypical easy deffinition, that's so broad contradictions don't got something to grab on.
On my course about writing papers, the lecturer warned us about using generalities.
This is beyond stupid.
Conservative tend to scare easier (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Conservative tend to scare easier (Score:5, Funny)
How would you administer such a study? Go up to random people with an airhorn and see their reaction? Then ask them if they're...
A) Liberal
B) Conservative
C) Going to beat you up, hence you should run real fast
Irons? (Score:3, Insightful)
Conservatives surround themselves with irons? :looks around:
C'mon, is my web cam on? Nobody I've ever known surrounds themselves with irons.
I've got a messy desk, though I try to keep it organized every few days, I've got music on my drive from Flowing Waters to ragas to Beethoven to Miles Davis to trash pop, all my books are on shelves unless I'm using them, and, yes, I have an alligator head from Louisiana nearby, as well as a Voltron, but my workspace is well-lit and I have some postage stamps in this desk's hutch. No flags or sports memorabilia are in sight.
I suspect that my mess's characteristics don't fit their model because the Liberal/Conservative single-political-dimension model is wildly oversimplistic. Trying to draw any conclusions based on it is just going to give you bad ideas.
In the real world most people would think I'm a conservative, though people who actually know me would think I'm a Classical Liberal. I know, I'm off-axis, for shame.
Re:Irons? (Score:4, Funny)
What, you don't play golf?
Paraphernalia (Score:5, Funny)
What does it mean if they're dimly lit and well decorated with drug paraphernalia?
absurd (Score:4, Insightful)
next time your partner asks you to tidy your room (Score:5, Funny)
Who comes up with this crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess this means I'm somewhere in the middle since my interests would indicate I'm a liberal but I have a tendency to want things neat and organized.
I have to say, it's quite obnoxious how utterly polarized politics has become in the US. It's basically all or nothing with too many people on both sides, to the point where a potentially sound idea is completely dismissed because it might have hints of being conservative or liberal. Instead of fixing existing systems too many people are intent on completely trashing it and replacing it with whatever conforms to their worldview. I don't even bother trying to discuss politics with some people I know because it results in them becoming openly hostile. They wont even take the time to consider my viewpoint and argue it. Instead I'm dismissed as a shill for one entity or another. The friends I do get into interesting discussions with are the ones who are legitimately moderate.
And this is amongst people who are somewhat informed, although some might draw all their news from one side of the aisle. Unfortunately, I encounter far too many people who don't know what the hell is going on beyond what they hear in sound bites. I find that overseas people seem to be better informed about politics. And their opinions seem to be more balanced. They seem inclined to side with parties based more on specific issues. And there's much less of this notion that one side has to take one stance on issues and the other side has to adopt the opposite stance.
What troubles me is that this is basically using science to reinforce stereotypes. Maybe someday someone will come along and tell us we can be cured of our political affiliations.
Value-laden nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
This article just blithely assumes personality traits are fixed at birth and then determine political beliefs, and makes essentially arbitrary value judgements on those traits.
Positive personality traits associated with liberalism (self-reliant, resilient, dominating and energetic) and negative ones attributed to conservatism (easily victimized or offended, indecisive, fearful and rigid) appear as young as nursery school-age kids--and correlate with those children's political beliefs in adulthood, according to a 20-year study published in 2006 in the Journal of Research in Personality. More recently, scientists linked the strength of a person's startle response to their political leanings: conservatives tended to scare easier, blinking harder than liberals when they heard a loud noise.
Now that thing about the startle response is interesting, especially because it's a simple enough trait that one can easily imagine it really is just genetics. On the other hand what's the point in describing personality traits as positive or negative here? Why not just say these traits were more common in liberals, and these over here were more common in conservatives? What purpose is served by mixing value judgements in with the attempted science like that? What kind of messed-up person describes 'dominating' as a positive trait in a political context, anyway?
I question the validity of the sample (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that you would need larger samples in more life/professional areas to draw reasonable conclusions. Could the tendency to be more or less organized also be attributable to one's profession or current life circumstance?
My room is full of trinkets and mementos, three guitars, a set of congas, clutter, and colorful trinkets from friends in other countries, and colorful gifts from friends who have traveled where I have not had the opportunity to go. You'll find evidence of my hobby of dabbling in foreign languages. You won't find a single American flag, sport poster, or banner, yet the majority of my political views are squarely conservative. While it is an interesting topic of study, the sample will need to be much larger, and the demographic divisors much more granular, before onclusions may be extended to the general population.
Re:If you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ayn Rand is one for the liberals how?
Libertarian, sure. But liberal... not so much.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you... (Score:4, Insightful)
modern "liberals" are no more liberal than "conservatives."
You know what the word means these days, so does everyone else. How come every time someone uses "Liberal" with the current, widely accepted use, someone on /. inevitably pipes up about how it used to mean something else? Words change, that one changed. Come on out of the 18th century already.
Re:If you... (Score:5, Insightful)
The current, widely accepted IN THE US use. In the UK, it still retains much of it original meaning.
The distinction that I came across between liberals and libertarians, which I think has some value, is that the liberal, while believing in personal freedom, also believes in social constructs, whereas the libertarian believes in rugged individuality. So a libertarian shoots trespassers on his first land and asks questions later, whereas a liberal checks if they are lost, ill, or some other socially acceptable reason, and only shoots when they are proved to be aggressors. The libertarian accepts that he will occasionally kil the innocent, the liberal that he will occasionally be to slow and get hurt himself.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Replace "trespassers" with "entering my house". I don't know any libertarians which shoot before determining the actions are malicious. You do them a disservice to say they're too stupid to think about their actions. Even the guy in Texas waited at least 5 minutes before being absolutely sure they were robbing his neighbors house.
The liberal, will not be able to shoot because the "common sense gun control" laws (what a doublespeak term that is, ha) he voted for have removed his right to own a gun for self defense (only for shooting animals!).
Re:If you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two Englishmen got drunk in Texas, got lost and walked up the path to a front door to ask the way - at 2am. The owner shot them dead without asking questions. He was acquitted in court. About five years ago.
In the UK, "liberal" does not equal gun control. Many UK liberals also want gun control, but in your parlance the two are not the same, which is my point. On the contrary, a true liberal wants the freedom to have guns - balanced by the requirement to keep your guns safe. It is US parlance that a liberal is one who restricts the freedom to own guns.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you... (Score:5, Funny)
If someone redefines another term in this topic my head is going to explode.
Re:If you... (Score:5, Funny)
If someone redefines another term in this topic my head is going to explode
It depends on what the definition of *IS* is.......
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Single.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Probably you're a messy liberal. Except you put them up that way intentionally, in which case you're a messed up conservative.
Re:Heh, not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>... and if you got no books at all, you might just be Republican :)
You know I'm sick of these prejudices (yes that is the correct word). I'm a Republican, I read lots of texts, and my room is about as messy & colorful as any liberal room.
Furthermore, I'm sick of the label "conservative". The idea that man should rule himself (not be ruled by politicians) is about as liberal as can be. I support legalization of marijuana (inside your own home) and same-sex marriages (it's your bedroom; do whatever you want). I'm as liberal as any Democrat, I just don't think having my government act like my daddy is the answer.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Heh, not so sure (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah yes, because it's Republicans who get called traitors and asked questions like why you hate America. *rolls eyes*
This conservative persecution complex is really laughable.
Re:Heh, not so sure (Score:4, Insightful)
It is also hilarious how conservatives claim to be the majority, and a persecuted minority at the same time. It is as if all concepts exist as discrete, disconnected entities in conservative minds. In this way of thinking, the fact that one is in the majority simply has no bearing on the fact that one is a minority. Both can be true. Beliefs are held because they are convenient, not because they are supported by and support other beliefs.
Re:American libertarians (Score:5, Interesting)
I also find it hilarious how people conflate libertarianism and Objectivism. Ayn Rand hated libertarians, primarily because she made the same mistake that everybody and their dog makes about libertarianism: she failed to realize that it's not a philosophy. Libertarianism is and should be a simple system of government that only deals with matters of harm (physical or financial) between persons. It doesn't make value judgments about actions outside of that spectrum, because it's not the role of a libertarian government to say whether it is better or worse for an individual to devote their lives to curing cancer or jerking off to porn. Because libertarianism wouldn't take any kind of stand on what man should do (only what man shouldn't do), Ayn Rand thought it was a weak and spineless philosophy, consequently missing the point that it wasn't a philosophy in the first place.
As highly as I think of Ayn Rand, she basically doomed Objectivism when she said that anybody who didn't believe exactly as she did couldn't call themselves an Objectivist. (This is not hypocrisy in the context of my first paragraph. There are reasonable and unreasonable degrees of interpretive difference. Lutherans and Baptists have interpretive differences but they're both Christian. A muslim couldn't reasonably call himself a Christian even if he argued about the role Christ has in the Quran. It's a subjective matter of symantics to some extent.) Particularly ironic and inconsistent considering that she herself wrote about the value of evolving philosophies and the fallacy of the pursuit much less the attainment of perfection. This has resulted in stagnancy by design.
Re:American libertarians (Score:4, Informative)
Outside the US, Libertarianism is a common term for Anarchism in general. When someone outside the US uses the term 'Libertarian' they mean something very different from what someone in the US means. Most anarchists outside the US are not of the capitalist/free market/individualist anarchist variety, they are left anarchists.
All anarchists, social and individualist, believe that government should be a simple system that only deals with harm. That is not the cause of the schism, that is the root of all anarchism. The schism is over two issues, first, what is property, and second, what is harm? Individualist anarchists advocate strong individual property rights and lax definitions of harm. By lax I mean, me using economic force to subjugate you is not harming you, it is helping you in individualist anarchist's eyes. If I weren't there to subjugate you financially, what would you eat? Social anarchists believe in democratic control of the means of production, and strict definitions of harm. We believe that people have a right to be free from financial subjugation, and that the only fair way to control the world's resources is through democratic control. One person or group asserting ownership of a natural resource amounts to stealing it from the rest of us.
Re:American libertarians (Score:4, Insightful)
If ownership of natural resources is predicated on adding value through labor, by what right does one add labor in the first place? Without adding the labor, one does not own the resource, therefore, one is stealing by adding one's labor to a resource one doesn't own.
Fair exchange? Is it fair exchange to hire a hit man to kill you? Is it fair exchange to hire a thief to steal your things? If I buy a bicycle from someone who stole it from you, to whom does the bike rightfully belong? Why is it fair exchange to purchase stolen land?
So, what moral excuse did Jack use to appropriate the land in the first place?
What happens when one individual wields more power through financial gamesmanship than any group can defend against?
No individual has any inherent rights. In fact, the concept of rights only exists in a social context. Without that context, one should more properly speak of power.
Rights derive from agreements between individuals. Specifically, rights come from an agreement to uphold and defend the right, and an agreement to punish those who would infringe the right. You can bleat on and on about your property rights, or your right to be free from attack, but without a group willing to back you up, or the power to defend yourself, your rights are meaningless to those who would take them from you.
What I'm hearing from you in regard to Nozick is, "I don't understand these ideas well enough to put them in my own words. I believe them because I like the consequences of believing them, not because I understand them." If you can't make the case yourself, you don't understand the concept, and I'm not going to go read someone you claim understands it better.
Re:Heh, not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick of you people misappropriating the word 'liberal'.
Re:Heh, not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Heh, not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
The Republican party hasn't stood for your values in decades. The size of government balloons under Republican administrations, they spend money like there's no tomorrow, they push through draconian legislation like the PATRIOT Act, and they don't support legalization of marijuana or same-sex marriages. Why do you continue to identify yourself as a Republican when it's obvious that they don't stand for anything you believe in?
Re:Heh, not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would I switch to Democrat when *they* don't stand for anything I believe either?
They talk about freedom, and yet they want to add even more taxes to my paycheck. I'm already losing 40% of my pay in automatic deductions. We don't need more taxes.
Re:Heh, not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
They talk about freedom, and yet they want to add even more taxes to my paycheck. I'm already losing 40% of my pay in automatic deductions. We don't need more taxes.
Why do you believe that "freedom" must mean "less taxes".
London Mayoral Elections (Score:5, Interesting)
We used an interesting system here in London to pick our mayor: Your ballot has two columns - your first choice and your second choice. You can't vote for the same person in both.
The idea is that the votes from everyone's first column are totalled up. If nobody gets more than 50% of the vote, they eliminate all but the top two candidates. They then add to each candidate's total all of the votes for that candidate in the second column. The winner is the one with the highest total from both columns combined.
In practice what this means is that you vote in column 1 for the candidate you'd really prefer, even if he has no chance of winning. You vote in the column 2 for a candidate who has a realistic chance of winning and whom you don't mind too much.
Applied to the national elections in America, it would mean that the greens could all vote for Nader safe in the knowledge that it wouldn't result in a "lost vote" for the Democrats. And libertarians could vote for Paul.
The beauty of such a system is that the final result would be a better reflection of the electorate's will (Gore would have won, for instance), and the true extent of minority candidates' support would also be more obvious, so those candidates would have a bigger influence on the election - for instance, they might not fall foul of the 15% "viability" standard required to participate in the debates. And in the long run, it's just possible that a third party might break the stranglehold of the Dems and Reps.
Am I crazy, or is this idea worth exploring in America?
Re:Heh, not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess what? You probably shouldn't be a Republican.
Just about the only thing that Republicans will do that you approve of, is cut taxes. They've shown they won't cut spending to match either so it's inevitable that that bill has to come due and taxes will rise even higher than they were before they were cut. You just might want to vote differently.
And to answer the follow up, people aren't prejudiced against Republicans. They're upset with the behaviour of Republican Politicians, Republican Pundits, the Republican Party and the voters who seem to excuse any amount of insanity as long as it comes with tax cuts.
Personally, I want my government to be based on reason and best practices, not faith and war and that's why I can't vote for the current Republican party. And if you're an objectivist, you just might want to think a little more closely about what steps are actually a good idea to get better government (even if better for you is only less) and which are not. "Starving the Beast" isn't working.
Re:Liberals love a mess? (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to your boy hero who just nationalized the banks.
Re:Liberals love a mess? (Score:5, Insightful)
All sides have dirty hands in that, from the very beginning.
This meltdown has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans failing us. It has to do with the black-box government as a whole failing us.
Perhaps our representatives could, at some point, get back to the job of representing us.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Either way this upcoming election should mean the final retirement of the corrupt Nixon cronies that came with Bush. so you might see a return to the traditional party line instead of this stupid "child molesters for the family" type of hypocritical representation with one f
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Those on the right have books about feminism. Those on the left have feminist books.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An interesting study. (Score:5, Insightful)
And as to the spending, Bush had a republican congress for most of his reign, and they managed to get our government and our country into a pretty deep financial hole. Living below your means? What a joke.
Re:An interesting study. (Score:5, Insightful)
You've seen the current national debt, right?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that the national debt is so large proves the point that the Republican party has veered so far away from true conservative values that they are more like Democrat Lite than the republicans of old. A more traditional conservative approach is to reduce the size of government. Maybe not to the level that Libertarians would but in the past 30 years, we've seen a decided move of Republicans to much more liberal tendencies. Remember, Republican and Democrat are not the same as conservative and libera
Re:Pop psychology (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So In Soviet Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though these kinds of analysis of political leaning toward behavior seem as silly as the easily startled tend to be more conservative.
Sille as it may seem when presented like this, it is not as stupid as that. In recent years there has been a lot of research into how mental processes relate to brain physiology, body chemistry etc, and in that context it isn't unreasonable to hypothesize about why people lean one way or another, politically.
Also, please note that this a statistical result - there is a apparent correlation between political leaning and the way you keep order. This can be seen as just a special case of the idea that the way you live your life influences your political opinion - IOW nothing surprising there.
What they don't say is that "if you are messy, you are always liberal".
How much of this do you folks in the Slashdot community out there really buy into?
Oh, every word, certainly. This is about critical thinking - it doesn't mean that you have to reject everything with scorn, out of hand, it just means that you don't accept things without first thinking about how they add up. It is surprising how often critical thinking leads you to accept and understand what others tell you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)