Conservative values claimed to be a mental illness
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.
For those of us that wonder why these right wing screwballs believe
the sky's the limit when it comes to public spending to kill people
but will scream bloody murder when public money is used for the public
good, or to feed people, this will prove to be interesting reading.
These symptoms are evident in many politicians. It is a curiosity why
politicians strive to be a public suck-up to the ultra wealthy; a kind
of authoritarian trait. Those with power can do no wrong. The rest of
us are suspect.
I've often been amazing arguing on usenet by the heavy reliance on
cartoon-think; the grim refusal to see anything but black and white.
I'm looking forward to reading this paper.
Thank you for posting this. Here is a link to the study:
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~hannahk/bulletin.pdf