At least in this study. Sort of. It also says Libs are rugged, take charge thinkers while Cons are milk toast wimps needing protection. No, I'm not joking.
"According to a controversial new study, set to be published in The Journal of Political Psychology, the bedrooms and offices of liberals, who are generally thought of as open, tend to be colorful and awash in 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.
Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to surround themselves with calendars, postage stamps, laundry baskets, irons and sewing materials in their personal spaces, according to the study. Their bedrooms and offices are well-lighted and decorated with sports paraphernalia and flags—especially American ones."
Controversial, in deed.
Fasten your seat belt. It gets better - more, uh, nuanced.
"The findings are just the latest in a burst of recent attempts to unearth politics in personality, the brain and DNA. Brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and even genetic tests are turning up possible clues to our political origins and behaviors.
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."
Read that emphasized part one more time.
Yup. It's them darn conservatives always wanting that nanny state stuff & running away from the world's bullies. Darn it.
Krykee. Typical misinformation tactic. Get it published and it becomes a magic reference source.
And Sci-Am used to be one of my favorite reads.
But, wait. There's hope. And maybe some change.
"Needless to say, not all experts are on board with the subtext of these conclusions. Political scientist Evan Charney dismisses links made by the studies between personality and ideology. "There's a lot of bad science here," says Charney, a fellow at the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy at Duke University.
"Confirmation bias has flooded into this [area of] study. I'm a liberal but I don’t believe liberals are superior people or that there's an obvious correlation between personality and political ideology," he says. The studies "take the most value-laden language and treat it as if you're talking about a left-spinning or right-spinning neutron. They are invariably going to reflect the value assumptions of a society—in this case, academic liberals."
