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Berkeley study links Reagan, Hitler
Get ready people, this is even going to infuriate Liberalhawk. Edited for length but read the whole thing.
In a study that ponders the similarities between former President Ronald Reagan, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Rush Limbaugh, four American university researchers say they now have a better understanding of what makes political conservatives tick.
Huh? Wasn’t Hitler a National Socialist?
Underlying psychological motivations that mark conservatives are "fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity; uncertainty avoidance; need for cognitive closure; and terror management," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin.
Cool! Does this mean that we’ll all eventually be able to get free reeducation treatment at government expense? From little mustard seeds do mighty trees grow....
"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," they wrote, according to a press release issued by the University of California at Berkeley. The researchers also contend left-wing ideologues such as Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro "might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended."
But, since their genocide actions were for the good of humanity as a whole, we’re going to leave them out of this study so that we can more narrowly focus on political concerns.
The study was conducted by Associate marxist fruitloop Professor Jack Glaser and visiting Professor Frank Sulloway of UC Berkeley, Associate Professor John Jost of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and Professor Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland at College Park. Glaser allowed that while conservatives are less "integratively complex" than others, "it doesn’t mean that they’re simple-minded."
Wow! Thanks guys! I feel better already!
Conservatives don’t feel the need to jump through complex, intellectual hoops in order to understand or justify some of their positions, he said, according to the Berkeley news release.
Yeah, it’s called common sense.
"They are more comfortable seeing and stating things in black and white in ways that would make liberals squirm," Glaser explained.
Couldn’t have phrased it better mysel.... hey, maybe there’s something to this study afterall!
The assistant professor of public policy said President George W. Bush’s comments during a 2001 trip to Italy provide an example. The Republican president told assembled world leaders, "I know what I believe, and I believe what I believe is right." Glaser also noted Bush told a British reporter last year, "Look, my job isn’t to nuance."
I’m not even sure what that last statement meant, but I probably agree with it.
The Berkeley news release said the psychologists sought patterns among 88 samples, involving 22,818 participants, taken from journal articles, books, conference papers, speeches, interviews, judicial opinions and survey studies. Consistent, common threads were found in 10 "meta-analytic calculations" performed on the material, Glaser said.
Meta-what? Oh, you mean that you made it up!
Berkeley’s Sulloway said the research is the first of its kind, synthesizing vast amounts of information to produce an "elegant and unifying explanation" for political conservatism under the rubric of "motivated social cognition."
I have an "elegant and unifying explanation" for the way I react, too: I'm right, goobers like these guys are wrong. My explanation's provable by empirical observation.
This area of psychological study, the news release explained, "entails the tendency of people’s attitudinal preferences on policy matters to be explained by individual needs based on personality, social interests or existential needs."
Read that sentence out loud. Don't blame me for what happens to your tongue...
Noting most all belief systems develop in part to satisfy psychological needs, the researchers said their conclusions do not "mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false, irrational, or unprincipled." Their finding also are not judgmental, they emphasized.
Judgemental? Noooo. Not politically motivated either.
"In many cases, including mass politics, ’liberal’ traits may be liabilities, and being intolerant of ambiguity, high on the need for closure, or low in cognitive complexity might be associated with such generally valued characteristics as personal commitment and unwavering loyalty," the researchers wrote.
Characteristics nobody in Berkeley actually has. Trust me on this one.
However, the study showed, according to Glaser, liberals appear to have a higher tolerance for change than conservatives.
And he needed a dozen years of college to come up with that?

FOLLOWUP: Jonah Golberg in NRO... This is just an excerpt. Don't drink anything while you're reading the whole thing...
But first, what is it about this that makes me think of bovine flatulence? Well, everything. Scientists spend millions of taxpayer dollars studying the methane which comes out of the academic end of heifers, reportedly because such gaseous discharge contributes to global warming. Whatever their reasons, they think it's important work. They either don't mind that their research stinks — literally — or they think all of their efforts are worth the money poured into them. And while words like gassy, insubstantial, and malodorous certainly apply to the Berkeley study, there are two chief differences between the study of cow flatulence and this study of conservative psychology. First, the cow-scientists can claim that there's a legitimate purpose to their pursuits. Overblown or not, global warming is something scientists should study. Secondly, while the earth-sciences folks are primarily concerned with what rises up and away from the back end of a bull, these bozos at Berkeley are 100 percent committed to studying and disseminating what plunks to the ground when it leaves the same anatomical disembarkation area.

Posted by: Secret Master 2003-07-24
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=16865