photo credit: Future liberal and conservative?Peter Carlson is the magazine writer atWaPo and is always worth a read. Today he reports on a story called "The Ideological Animal," in the January/February issue of Psychology Today.
In 1969, two Berkeley professors studied the personalities of nursery school children.Twenty years later . . . the profs found the kids, who were 23 years old, and asked them whether they were conservatives or liberals.
The ones who called themselves liberals had been described by their nursery school teachers as "self-reliant, energetic, impulsive and resilient."
The 23-year-old conservatives had been described as "easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited and vulnerable at age 3."
While this is all humorous, it also exposes the importance of good early education. I try not to be a conspiracy theorist; continued Republican underfunding of good pre-school may not be a conscious goal, but it seems to be one of the best ways to guarantee future membership in the far-right wing. No wonder kids grow up to exhibit those 3-year-old qualities of imagined victimization, offense, fear, and rigidity. Karl Rove must know this. Does it factor into their funding priorities?
Liberals have more books, and their books cover a greater variety of topics. And that's just a start. Multiple studies find that liberals are more optimistic. Conservatives are more likely to be religious. Liberals are more likely to like classical music and jazz, conservatives, country music. Liberals are more likely to enjoy abstract art. Conservative men are more likely than liberal men to prefer conventional forms of entertainment like TV and talk radio. Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men. Liberal women are more likely than conservative women to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments.
This is interesting as well, and explains a lot:
The study's authors also concluded that conservatives have less tolerance for ambiguity, a trait they say is exemplified when George Bush says things like, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think," and "I'm the decider." Those who think the world is highly dangerous and those with the greatest fear of death are the most likely to be conservative.
Liberal women are more likely than conservative women to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments.
If they don't like writing, well, that pretty much means that they cannot function well on internet communities.