Mar 22, 2006

Euromole Whispers Of Whiners


Euromole just sent us another naked link. What's Euromole trying to tell us this time? Below is an excerpt from the link.
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.

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.

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.

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.
Read More At The Star

4 comments:

Effwit said...

This study is not really surprising.

Someone who has always been insecure would naturally have a political orientation that stresses defense and security.

On the other hand, a person who has a high tolerance personally for physical or emotional abuse will naturally tend to worry more about people who are suffering and try to make them feel better. They won't be fearful either.

The strong conservative myth comes from the outward appearance of the puffed-out chest and swagger of someone fearful at heart.

M1 said...

Effwit:

"...who has always been insecure would..." I agree

"...high tolerance personally for physical..." If you mean high tolerance for abuse in as much they don't perceive taunts to be abuse as an adult doesn't get hurt by a child - then I agree. If you're saying that a person who takes real lickings and sucks it up(such as an abused wife)will tend to be a more empathetic person...well then I might have issues with you. But I assume my former take on this was closer to your meaning - and I assume so because I don't want another fist fight with you after the last one we had you know where.

"The strong conservative..." Yepp. There's the real history ripe with puffy chested cowboys and then there's the history of how the world really works with bullets to the back,AIDS, and Dick.

----- ---------- ----------

Abusers abuse. The insecure often choose to compensate by anabolizing instead of individuating. Those who find evil in themselves often subconciously project these qualities upon others and claim hence that others are beseiged with iniquity and must be purged and purified. Sort of trying to cure others of an illness that only you have.

Much of the rhetoric and posturing of deformed conservatism appears to indeed mirror the deformed personalities populating its wimp assed collective.

I learned some nifty trix during my eclectic schooling, one of which was: - if a person you've never met before makes negative claims about you then they are probably revealing qualities they despise in themselves. If a person you've never met before enters your space and fills you with certain emotions then they most certainly are filled with those emotions themselves...and you just picked up on them like a radio receiver.Potent tools once honed and mastered.

Anyways, insights and tools like the above are rather formidable when prognosticating the behaviour of some of these Admin sleezeballs who behave more like caricatures than people. It's also why I think LGF is such a riot...it's so obviously a pen stuffed with terrified midgets trying to convince themselves that they really are brav big boys now.

Chicken-assed nazis the lot of them. And they want good, strong, dorky, and brave American kids to go fight their ghosts for 'em. Can't FEMA round up those fucks if any rounding up is to be done?

Effwit said...

M1:

"...high tolerance personally for physical..."

I was referring to a deep truth regarding the loss of fear once one has crossed the abyss. (Not talking about S/M type of activities here, though there may be a similiar effect.)

Once you have lost fear of physical or other pain, serious compassion can arise. The abused wife or psychopathic sicko may be the exception that proves the rule.

Or perhaps I am generalizing from my long ago Zen practice and completely incorrect about normal people.

......................


compensation

individuation

projection

A Jungian. Outstanding.

M1 said...

LOL

(Whatever gets the gurlz caroused!)