FW: Psyhcological study - conservativism as pathology

I haven't verified any of this. Seems both very believable (even obvious)
and (regrettably) very hard to believe (that anyone would get away with such
a study)... -Kurt

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Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 19:51:15 -0700
Subject: FW: Psyhcological study - conservativism as pathology

Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve
Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian (UK)

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be
explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and
aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four
authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow
host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned
inequality".

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report,
Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in
public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the
National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns
out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral
certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to
arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and
stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to
shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the
Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger,
added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is
pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".

Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had
received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the
study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk
about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions
that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be
less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed,
less loyal."

But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post columnist
who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The
professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological
needs and neuroses." #

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