How much does your personality (as a child) affect your political leanings when adult

Debaser · 05-10-2006, 01:17 PM

How to Spot a Baby Conservative
KID POLITICS | Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and traditional. Future liberals, on the other hand ...
Mar. 19, 2006. 10:45 AM
KURT KLEINER
SPECIAL TO THE TORONTO STAR

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn't going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.

But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative of the whole country. But within his sample, he says, the results hold. He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial.

In a society that values self-confidence and out-goingness, it's a mostly flattering picture for liberals. It also runs contrary to the American stereotype of wimpy liberals and strong conservatives.

Of course, if you're studying the psychology of politics, you shouldn't be surprised to get a political reaction. Similar work by John T. Jost of Stanford and colleagues in 2003 drew a political backlash. The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the psychology of conservatism, and concluded that people who are dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to conservatism. Critics branded it the "conservatives are crazy" study and accused the authors of a political bias.

Jost welcomed the new study, saying it lends support to his conclusions. But Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona who was critical of Jost's study, was less impressed.

`I found (the Jack Block study) to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best'

Jeff Greenberg
University of Arizona

"I found it to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best," he said of the Block study. He thinks insecure, defensive, rigid people can as easily gravitate to left-wing ideologies as right-wing ones. He suspects that in Communist China, those kinds of people would likely become fervid party members.

The results do raise some obvious questions. Are nursery school teachers in the conservative heartland cursed with classes filled with little proto-conservative whiners?

Or does an insecure little boy raised in Idaho or Alberta surrounded by conservatives turn instead to liberalism?

Or do the whiny kids grow up conservative along with the majority of their more confident peers, while only the kids with poor impulse control turn liberal?

Part of the answer is that personality is not the only factor that determines political leanings. For instance, there was a .27 correlation between being self-reliant in nursery school and being a liberal as an adult. Another way of saying it is that self-reliance predicts statistically about 7 per cent of the variance between kids who became liberal and those who became conservative. (If every self-reliant kid became a liberal and none became conservatives, it would predict 100 per cent of the variance). Seven per cent is fairly strong for social science, but it still leaves an awful lot of room for other influences, such as friends, family, education, personal experience and plain old intellect.

For conservatives whose feelings are still hurt, there is a more flattering way for them to look at the results. Even if they really did tend to be insecure complainers as kids, they might simply have recognized that the world is a scary, unfair place.

Their grown-up conclusion that the safest thing is to stick to tradition could well be the right one. As for their "rigidity," maybe that's just moral certainty.

The grown-up liberal men, on the other hand, with their introspection and recognition of complexity in the world, could be seen as self-indulgent and ineffectual.

Whether anyone's feelings are hurt or not, the work suggests that personality and emotions play a bigger role in our political leanings than we think. All of us, liberal or conservative, feel as though we've reached our political opinions by carefully weighing the evidence and exercising our best judgment. But it could be that all of that careful reasoning is just after-the-fact self-justification. What if personality forms our political outlook, with reason coming along behind, rationalizing after the fact?

It could be that whom we vote for has less to do with our judgments about tax policy or free trade or health care, and more with the personalities we've been stuck with since we were kids.

Kurt Kleiner is a Toronto-based freelance science writer.

************************************************** ****************

The Cal Berkeley Study:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r...6/03/block.pdf

The 2005 study, published in the Journal of Research In Personality, identified prominent personality traits in a group of children and then identified their political affiliations decades later, when they had reached adulthood, to determine if there was any correlation. The study concluded that certain personality traits, such as being "indecisive," "fearful," "rigid" and "inhibited," were common among children who grew up to be conservative, while other traits, including "self-reliant," "energetic" and "resilient," were common among those who grew up to be liberal.

Debaser · 05-10-2006, 01:20 PM

Ad hominem:

A (fallacious) ad hominem argument has the basic form:

1. A makes claim X.
2. There is something objectionable about A.
3. Therefore claim X is false.

The first statement is called a 'factual claim' and is the pivot point of much debate. The last statement is referred to as an 'inferential claim' and represents the reasoning process. There are two types of inferential claim, explicit and implicit. Arguments that (fallaciously) rely on the positive aspects of the person for the truth of the conclusion are discussed under appeal to authority.

Ad hominem is one of the best-known of the logical fallacies usually enumerated in introductory logic and critical thinking textbooks. Both the fallacy itself, and accusations of having committed it, are often brandished in actual discourse (see also Argument from fallacy). As a technique of rhetoric, it is powerful and used often, despite its lack of subtlety.

Nimrod's Son · 05-10-2006, 01:33 PM

that sounds like a very scientific and unbiased study which is what one would expect from a Berkeley professor

Corganist · 04:45 PM

What a load of crap. Tiny sample size from a very narrow sample base. No inclusion of the raw data used to get the numbers. Half of the data gathered seems to be based on totally subjective impressions that are not defined in any way. (What exactly does it mean to be "an interesting, colorful person"??? Interesting to who?) Hell, there's not any kind of indication on what the breakdown was on how many kids of the 95 even turned out to be conservative and how many turned out to be liberal. (I have my doubts that very many of them did turn out conservative, and if that's the case that'll skew the data quite a bit.)

I've seen better psych experiments done by undergrads.

jared · 05-10-2006, 04:05 PM

look at that, two whiny posts

Junebug · 05-10-2006, 04:38 PM

I just hope that by liberal/conservative they don't mean democrat/republican....though that's what it sonds like.

this reminds me of the time i was in a kindergarten classroom and the teacher asked who the president was. one kid yelled out "george bush!". the girl sitting next to him looked over and said in her "yes, I am indeed omnipotent" voice, "george bush is evil!". kids are so awesome.

Starla · 05-10-2006, 04:46 PM

I think the study is interesting but I'm not convinced it's just whiney children who grow up to be conservatives. Anyone who grew up in Berkeley, where the majority of people living there are liberals, are bound to be influenced by their geographical local and exposure to parents who may have been politically active during their childhood, and their parent's/guardian's ways of thinking. I'd rather see studies on that, and if the children remain liberal, become republican, or indifferent. Not the emotional/psychological outcomes.
I think most children are whiney anyways.

zbeast78 · 05-11-2006, 03:26 PM

this may be the stupidest, most unscientific study i've ever seen.

Skellington · 05-11-2006, 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zbeast78

this may be the stupidest, most unscientific study i've ever seen.

It is not meant to be a study that can be generalized from, it is qualitative research that identifies a trend which will probably researched more in the following years. What do you mean by unscientific? How are you supposed to approach human social behaviour through empiricism?

zbeast78 · 05-12-2006, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skellington

It is not meant to be a study that can be generalized from, it is qualitative research that identifies a trend which will probably researched more in the following years. What do you mean by unscientific? How are you supposed to approach human social behaviour through empiricism?

its silly because i've seen the same study done with the exact opposite results. these studies have just become people spouting their agenda thru slanted "studies". i don't buy them from either side. Its just like the "IQs of each state" that appeared right after the election.

Nimrod's Son · 05-13-2006, 11:47 AM

no really, i bet they had naked guy as a researcher on this

Debaser · 05-13-2006, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zbeast78

its silly because i've seen the same study done with the exact opposite results.

I'd love to see those ones. Where are they?

Nimrod's Son · 05-13-2006, 12:37 PM

i'm gonna guess not on berkeley.edu

zbeast78 · 05-14-2006, 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nimrod's Son

i'm gonna guess not on berkeley.edu

actually, i think it was for the National Review or one of those other Republican rags i see when i visit my dads house. But who cares? My friend nate whines about everything in his life, blames his parents for all his problems (even though they're paying for him to go thru college) & he's a die-hard liberal. Me being a "middle-of-the road politically" person, its easier for me to see how full of shit people are from both sides of the coin.

05-10-2006, 01:17 PM	#1
Debaser ghost Location: @SactoMacto Posts: 12,201	How much does your personality (as a child) affect your political leanings when adult How to Spot a Baby Conservative KID POLITICS \| Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and traditional. Future liberals, on the other hand ... Mar. 19, 2006. 10:45 AM KURT KLEINER SPECIAL TO THE TORONTO STAR Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative. At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals. The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn't going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding. But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings. A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity. The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective. Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative of the whole country. But within his sample, he says, the results hold. He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial. In a society that values self-confidence and out-goingness, it's a mostly flattering picture for liberals. It also runs contrary to the American stereotype of wimpy liberals and strong conservatives. Of course, if you're studying the psychology of politics, you shouldn't be surprised to get a political reaction. Similar work by John T. Jost of Stanford and colleagues in 2003 drew a political backlash. The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the psychology of conservatism, and concluded that people who are dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to conservatism. Critics branded it the "conservatives are crazy" study and accused the authors of a political bias. Jost welcomed the new study, saying it lends support to his conclusions. But Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona who was critical of Jost's study, was less impressed. `I found (the Jack Block study) to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best' Jeff Greenberg University of Arizona "I found it to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best," he said of the Block study. He thinks insecure, defensive, rigid people can as easily gravitate to left-wing ideologies as right-wing ones. He suspects that in Communist China, those kinds of people would likely become fervid party members. The results do raise some obvious questions. Are nursery school teachers in the conservative heartland cursed with classes filled with little proto-conservative whiners? Or does an insecure little boy raised in Idaho or Alberta surrounded by conservatives turn instead to liberalism? Or do the whiny kids grow up conservative along with the majority of their more confident peers, while only the kids with poor impulse control turn liberal? Part of the answer is that personality is not the only factor that determines political leanings. For instance, there was a .27 correlation between being self-reliant in nursery school and being a liberal as an adult. Another way of saying it is that self-reliance predicts statistically about 7 per cent of the variance between kids who became liberal and those who became conservative. (If every self-reliant kid became a liberal and none became conservatives, it would predict 100 per cent of the variance). Seven per cent is fairly strong for social science, but it still leaves an awful lot of room for other influences, such as friends, family, education, personal experience and plain old intellect. For conservatives whose feelings are still hurt, there is a more flattering way for them to look at the results. Even if they really did tend to be insecure complainers as kids, they might simply have recognized that the world is a scary, unfair place. Their grown-up conclusion that the safest thing is to stick to tradition could well be the right one. As for their "rigidity," maybe that's just moral certainty. The grown-up liberal men, on the other hand, with their introspection and recognition of complexity in the world, could be seen as self-indulgent and ineffectual. Whether anyone's feelings are hurt or not, the work suggests that personality and emotions play a bigger role in our political leanings than we think. All of us, liberal or conservative, feel as though we've reached our political opinions by carefully weighing the evidence and exercising our best judgment. But it could be that all of that careful reasoning is just after-the-fact self-justification. What if personality forms our political outlook, with reason coming along behind, rationalizing after the fact? It could be that whom we vote for has less to do with our judgments about tax policy or free trade or health care, and more with the personalities we've been stuck with since we were kids. Kurt Kleiner is a Toronto-based freelance science writer. ************************************************ ************** The Cal Berkeley Study: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r...6/03/block.pdf The 2005 study, published in the Journal of Research In Personality, identified prominent personality traits in a group of children and then identified their political affiliations decades later, when they had reached adulthood, to determine if there was any correlation. The study concluded that certain personality traits, such as being "indecisive," "fearful," "rigid" and "inhibited," were common among children who grew up to be conservative, while other traits, including "self-reliant," "energetic" and "resilient," were common among those who grew up to be liberal.

05-10-2006, 01:20 PM	#2
Debaser ghost Location: @SactoMacto Posts: 12,201	pre-emptive strike Ad hominem: A (fallacious) ad hominem argument has the basic form: 1. A makes claim X. 2. There is something objectionable about A. 3. Therefore claim X is false. The first statement is called a 'factual claim' and is the pivot point of much debate. The last statement is referred to as an 'inferential claim' and represents the reasoning process. There are two types of inferential claim, explicit and implicit. Arguments that (fallaciously) rely on the positive aspects of the person for the truth of the conclusion are discussed under appeal to authority. Ad hominem is one of the best-known of the logical fallacies usually enumerated in introductory logic and critical thinking textbooks. Both the fallacy itself, and accusations of having committed it, are often brandished in actual discourse (see also Argument from fallacy). As a technique of rhetoric, it is powerful and used often, despite its lack of subtlety.

05-10-2006, 03:35 PM	#4
Corganist Minion of Satan Location: Arkansas Posts: 7,240	What a load of crap. Tiny sample size from a very narrow sample base. No inclusion of the raw data used to get the numbers. Half of the data gathered seems to be based on totally subjective impressions that are not defined in any way. (What exactly does it mean to be "an interesting, colorful person"??? Interesting to who?) Hell, there's not any kind of indication on what the breakdown was on how many kids of the 95 even turned out to be conservative and how many turned out to be liberal. (I have my doubts that very many of them did turn out conservative, and if that's the case that'll skew the data quite a bit.) I've seen better psych experiments done by undergrads. Last edited by Corganist : 05-10-2006 at 04:45 PM.

05-10-2006, 04:38 PM	#6
Junebug Minion of Satan Posts: 7,072	^ heh I just hope that by liberal/conservative they don't mean democrat/republican....though that's what it sonds like. this reminds me of the time i was in a kindergarten classroom and the teacher asked who the president was. one kid yelled out "george bush!". the girl sitting next to him looked over and said in her "yes, I am indeed omnipotent" voice, "george bush is evil!". kids are so awesome.

05-10-2006, 01:33 PM	#3
Nimrod's Son Master of Karate and Friendship Location: in your butt Posts: 72,943	that sounds like a very scientific and unbiased study which is what one would expect from a Berkeley professor

05-10-2006, 04:05 PM	#5
jared Apocalyptic Poster Location: sacramento, ca, usa Posts: 2,193	look at that, two whiny posts

05-10-2006, 04:46 PM	#7
Starla ***** Posts: 15,778	I think the study is interesting but I'm not convinced it's just whiney children who grow up to be conservatives. Anyone who grew up in Berkeley, where the majority of people living there are liberals, are bound to be influenced by their geographical local and exposure to parents who may have been politically active during their childhood, and their parent's/guardian's ways of thinking. I'd rather see studies on that, and if the children remain liberal, become republican, or indifferent. Not the emotional/psychological outcomes. I think most children are whiney anyways.

05-11-2006, 03:26 PM	#8
zbeast78 Ownz Posts: 810	this may be the stupidest, most unscientific study i've ever seen.

05-13-2006, 11:47 AM	#11
Nimrod's Son Master of Karate and Friendship Location: in your butt Posts: 72,943	no really, i bet they had naked guy as a researcher on this

05-13-2006, 12:37 PM	#13
Nimrod's Son Master of Karate and Friendship Location: in your butt Posts: 72,943	i'm gonna guess not on berkeley.edu