A critique of research by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski
That old Leftist, John B. Judis, has an article in The New Republic that summarizes a stream of psychological research into fear of death that goes by the name of "worldview defense". The idea is that if you are reminded of your own mortality, you become more conservative.
In one way, that is all fair enough. The old saying "A conservative is a liberal who was mugged last night" embodies a similar idea and represents a claim that conservatives often make: That they are more realistic and that Leftists are dreamers who need to be brought down to earth. Being vividly reminded of your own forthcoming death (which is what the psychological experiments concerned do) should invoke a similar burst of realism and disable dreamy views of life.
So an interpretations of the findings congenial to conservatives is more than possible. Judis and those he quotes, however, strain to find a more elaborate interpretation that is some way derisory of conservatives. But in doing so Judis falls into a trap common among psychologists and other Leftists: He lives in such a self-protective Leftist bubble that he basically just does not know what conservatism is or what conservatives think. For decades now, psychologists have been devising questionnaires that allegedly "measure" conservatism but which in fact give no prediction of vote at all! The ludicrous Bob Altemeyer is the most recent example of that. The highpoint of such ignorance, however, would have to be the 2003 "Berkeley" study which classified various Communist leaders as conservatives. That Communists and conservatives have radically different views about the world had apparently not penetrated the ivory towers of UCB!
So we have the following remarkable comment from Judis: Also central to worldview defense is the protection of tradition against social experimentation, of community values against individual prerogatives". And you thought it was conservatives who stood for individual liberties! Not so, according to Judis. Conservatives stand for "community values". So Hillary Clinton, with her quotation of an old African saying that "It takes a village to raise a child" must be a conservative!
So I don't think we really need to say much more about such profound ignorance. As this stuff falls squarely within my own field of professional expertise; however, I will make one more comment: Answers to questions that are obtained from young college students (which is mainly what Judis is referring to) often tell you very little about the real world. The very first piece of psychological research that I ever did was based on responses from students and I found a most gratifying correlation of .808 between the two variables concerned. Being a born skeptic, however, I then did something that psychologists almost never do: I repeated the research among a group much more representative of the general population. And I found NO correlation between my two variables on that group.
And so it seems also to be with the research by Pyszczynski and friends that Judis quotes. Using student responses, Pyszczynski et al. found a correlation between awareness of death and what they (in their confused way) define as conservatism but I carried out long ago a piece of research into much the same question. I looked at the correlation between attitude to death and conservatism among a general population sample. And I used a measure of conservatism that DID closely reflect the political divisions of the day. So what did I find? I found that there was NO correlation between attititude to death and conservatism whatsoever. Nor was there any connection between anxiety generally and conservatism. So the Pyszczynski/Judis claims fail a more rigorous test. What they think happens, does NOT happen in the real world.
And I carried out that piece of research in collaboration with the head of our local Sociology department -- an impeccably mainstream Jewish Leftist. So the ad hominem attacks that one expects from Leftists would be more than usually implausible in this case.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
That old Leftist, John B. Judis, has an article in The New Republic that summarizes a stream of psychological research into fear of death that goes by the name of "worldview defense". The idea is that if you are reminded of your own mortality, you become more conservative.
In one way, that is all fair enough. The old saying "A conservative is a liberal who was mugged last night" embodies a similar idea and represents a claim that conservatives often make: That they are more realistic and that Leftists are dreamers who need to be brought down to earth. Being vividly reminded of your own forthcoming death (which is what the psychological experiments concerned do) should invoke a similar burst of realism and disable dreamy views of life.
So an interpretations of the findings congenial to conservatives is more than possible. Judis and those he quotes, however, strain to find a more elaborate interpretation that is some way derisory of conservatives. But in doing so Judis falls into a trap common among psychologists and other Leftists: He lives in such a self-protective Leftist bubble that he basically just does not know what conservatism is or what conservatives think. For decades now, psychologists have been devising questionnaires that allegedly "measure" conservatism but which in fact give no prediction of vote at all! The ludicrous Bob Altemeyer is the most recent example of that. The highpoint of such ignorance, however, would have to be the 2003 "Berkeley" study which classified various Communist leaders as conservatives. That Communists and conservatives have radically different views about the world had apparently not penetrated the ivory towers of UCB!
So we have the following remarkable comment from Judis: Also central to worldview defense is the protection of tradition against social experimentation, of community values against individual prerogatives". And you thought it was conservatives who stood for individual liberties! Not so, according to Judis. Conservatives stand for "community values". So Hillary Clinton, with her quotation of an old African saying that "It takes a village to raise a child" must be a conservative!
So I don't think we really need to say much more about such profound ignorance. As this stuff falls squarely within my own field of professional expertise; however, I will make one more comment: Answers to questions that are obtained from young college students (which is mainly what Judis is referring to) often tell you very little about the real world. The very first piece of psychological research that I ever did was based on responses from students and I found a most gratifying correlation of .808 between the two variables concerned. Being a born skeptic, however, I then did something that psychologists almost never do: I repeated the research among a group much more representative of the general population. And I found NO correlation between my two variables on that group.
And so it seems also to be with the research by Pyszczynski and friends that Judis quotes. Using student responses, Pyszczynski et al. found a correlation between awareness of death and what they (in their confused way) define as conservatism but I carried out long ago a piece of research into much the same question. I looked at the correlation between attitude to death and conservatism among a general population sample. And I used a measure of conservatism that DID closely reflect the political divisions of the day. So what did I find? I found that there was NO correlation between attititude to death and conservatism whatsoever. Nor was there any connection between anxiety generally and conservatism. So the Pyszczynski/Judis claims fail a more rigorous test. What they think happens, does NOT happen in the real world.
And I carried out that piece of research in collaboration with the head of our local Sociology department -- an impeccably mainstream Jewish Leftist. So the ad hominem attacks that one expects from Leftists would be more than usually implausible in this case.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
8 comments:
And you thought it was conservatives who stood for individual liberties!
Not any more. Remember the illegal wiretapping? You know, the one where the top DOJ officials and the FBI Director were going to resign?
Did you also forget the GOP intrusion into the Schiavo case?
steve j:
1 - there was NO WIRETAPPING.
none. ZEROOOOO. u idiot.
there was and still is INTERCEPTS of international calls where one person is a suspected al qaeda agent.
no American citizens had their rights diminished.
and we are all much safer as a result.
even dupes like you.
2 - terri schiavo did NOT leave written instructions for doctors. her ESTRANGED husband - living with another woman, the mother of his children - claimed that she would've wanted to be dead. her parents disagreed.
WOULD YOU WANT YOUR EX-SPOUSE MAKING THESE DECISIONS FOR YOU?!?
this is why we all should have DNR's and living wills if this is what we want done. THE BUSHES HAVE THESE.
even the pope refused medical care at the end.
we are allowed to die.
all the government did in the schiavo case was intervene on behalf of the parents.
the government tried to give terri and her parents as many appeals and as much due process as a convicted murderer.
SINCE SHE WAS KILLED, BY WITHHOLDING WATER AND FOOD -(something which would get me arrested if i did it to my dog or cat!) - there have been a few seemingly miraculous cases of recovery from severe brain injury --- cases in which the doctors thought there was NO CHANCE. one case involved electrical stimulation of the brain with implanted electrodes.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
terri didn't get that chance.
AND ANOTHER THING: there is a frenchman who is about 45 who has only 10% of his brain and functions FINE.
granted --- he's french!
but still, it shows that the brain is a complex organ and something where "scientific consensus" falls short.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=82658
and:
smaller than average managed to live an entirely normal life working as a civil servant. When the 44-year-old man's brain was scanned, it showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber took up most of his skull. French researchers say it left room for only a thin sheet of actual brain tissue. "He was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant," Dr Lionel Feuillet of the Universite de la Mediterranee in Marseille said in the Lancet medical journal. When Dr Feuillet's staff took his medical history, they discovered he had had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away water on the brain as a child. The researchers were shocked when scans showed a "massive enlargement" of the lateral ventricles - chambers, usually small in size, that hold the fluid that acts as a cushion for the brain. Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not enough to classify him as mentally retarded or disabled. "What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life," said Dr Max Muenke, a brain specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute. "If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side."
http://www.wayodd.com/french-man-with-tiny-brain-leads-normal-life/v/7686/
BOTTOM LINE: our rights have been less curtailed by bush and during this war than during WW2 and by fdr. or during the us civil war and lincoln.
bush is more of a libertarian than they were, evidently.
and they are nonetheless regarded very highly by lefties.
tinkabouddditt!
the threat to your rights is a product of LEFTIST PROPAGANDA.
not reality.
wake up.
WOULD YOU WANT YOUR EX-SPOUSE MAKING THESE DECISIONS FOR YOU?!?
IN THIS CASE, YES
no American citizens had their rights diminished.
Then why did all those officials threaten to resign?
all the government did in the schiavo case was intervene on behalf of the parents.
The GOP pandered to the Fundies and lost ALL claim to be the party of individual rights.
one case involved electrical stimulation of the brain with implanted electrodes.
Michael to Terri to California and had some put in. They didn't work.
you'd let your EX WIFE have life a death decisions over you? even if she was cohabiting with another man and stood to get/keep MUCHO MOOLA if you died!?!?
you are a dupe.
they killed terri in a way which woulda got you arrested for animal cruelty.
With all due respect, I think that you have a skewed view of the definition of "conservative", one that is so common in America today that it irritates me to no end. A conservative doesn't necessarily subscribe to a specific set of views any more than a liberal does. Nor does the Republican party have anything to do with conservatism aside from the prevailing socially conservative attitudes within its base. What a conservative does do is be more resistant to views other than their own. A radical pro-choice advocate who won't change their mind is a conservative, as much as their radical pro-life counterpart. Kennedy addressed this well.
So yes, knowledge of one's own mortality does make one more conservative, because one cleaves to views and people that one finds safe. A rape happens, and for the next month all the women in that neighborhood make sure they're with someone when they go out.
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