Liberals is smarterness!
posted by saurabh in Science!, The two-headed hydra |Many liberals are crowing happily about a new study in Nature Neuroscience that purports to prove (basically) that liberals are better at parsing input correctly than conservatives. The study authors are careful to be politically circumspect in their statements, saying that this is only one test, conservatives might do better at others, but it’s pretty clear what they want to say: liberals are smarter.
It’s hard to argue with their results. As you can see from the figure I stole from their paper, the correlation is quite strong. A regression like that is an experimentalist’s wet dream. The only question is, what are they measuring?
I’m deeply skeptical of studies like this. Political orientation is not plastic; people change their views all the time, especially during college (which I imagine is where the bulk of the study sample was drawn from). Case in point: me. When I started school in 1996 I was a Dole supporter, staunchly conservative. When I graduated at the end of 1999 I was an anarcho-communist. Furthermore, political orientation is a very ill-defined quantity. “Liberal” or “conservative” may be taken on many, many different bases, and I would strongly dispute the authors’ contention that there is a political “spectrum”. I do not believe in a holistic “liberal” worldview, any more than I believe in a holistic “conservative” worldview. These are constructions imposed on public discourse by a self-feeding party machinery, and I don’t think actual political viewpoints can be so neatly broken down. I therefore find it hard to believe that there should be fundamental neurological attributes correlating with political orientation. How, then, do I explain these results?
Just prior to performing the trials, the subjects are given a questionnaire on their political orientation. That is, the study primes them to think about politics before they enter the trial. The study methodology relies on the ability of the subject to distinguish between the letter ‘M’ and the letter ‘W’.
Liberals have spent the past eight years imbuing the symbol ‘W’ with a particularly strong sense of hatred. Since they are going into the study primed to think about politics, it stands to reason that those subjects self-identifying as liberals would not see the two alternatives as value-neutral. That is, conservatives are distinguishing between the letters “M” and “W”. Liberals are choosing between “Bush” and “Something Else”, and are therefore bringing different cognitive resources to bear on the task.
This is a conjecture, of course, and easily tested by using two other symbols (say, ‘b’ and ‘d’) that don’t have any political implications. But given the dubious nature of the proposition and the visceral nature of the reactions being measured, I suspect that the choice of letters goes a long way towards explaining this difference.
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Situational continuum works better than spectrum, at least for viewpoints. What they all do in practice is another story.
As for the experiment itself, I find it quite sinister. It’s more meaningful that such a cognitively simplistic and apparently politically naive test could be conceived, administered and find volunteers to take it.
That being said, wingnuts are still whiny authoritarian collectivists and liberals are feckless brains in vats, content to know trolleys.
Excellent point. It also should be pointed out that these were the folks (at least some of them) who brought us that silly `03 study, which said that conservatives as children were frightened, dependent, hostile, needy, etc. in other words modern liberals while the lefties as children were confident, independent, adventurous, i.e. modern conservatives. They turned the definitions upside down. I wonder what it is that lead them to assign the place on the chart? The student`s own identification may have been compromised; this was a college campus, after all, and many students would naturally fear reprisals from activist professors.
You know, this could actually suggest that the liberals tend to bog down on minutae, indecisively pondering which button to press rather than simply making a quick decision. Who the hell cares, after all?
Also, what were the circumstances of the test? I`ve read that there were 26 self-identified liberals and only 7 self-identified conservatives. Can that be a statistically significant sampling? What were the details with the testees? Were they tired or alert? What about eye-sight; did some see better than others? How did the testers incentivise to get participants? What time of day were the tests performed? These are all very pertinent questions.
What about Libertarians? Why didn`t they throw them into the mix? Libertarians are neither Conservative nor Liberal; why didn`t the researchers consider them? Because this had a specified political goal.
Given the number of people who change their philosophy over time, I think this whole exercise less than meaningless. This is just one more example of science being manipulated for the benefit of liberalism.
I think this makes an excellent hand-eye coordination test, but I don`t know what these people think they have proven.
When I started school in 1996 I was a Dole supporter, staunchly conservative.
Whoa. You just dented my brain, dude.
Saheli,
You’re surprised? He’s denied it every time I’ve brought it up!
He used to borrow his friend’s Rush Limbaugh tapes and watch them when he was in high school.
Yo, don’t tell people that!
I’m your older sister. I have a Deity-given right to embarass you in public by telling humiliating stories about your childhood.
Dude - I knew you were openminded but I had no idea just how far that could go.