Breakthrough study: Conservatives stupid, liberals “nuanced”
posted at 7:54 pm on September 9, 2007 by Allahpundit
Send to a Friend |
printer-friendly
I knew I was inferior. I just couldn’t prove it.
Participants were college students whose politics ranged from “very liberal” to “very conservative.” Scientists instructed them to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.
M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.
Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in their anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M…
Analyzing the data, [Berkeley researcher Frank J.] Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times more likely than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts and were 2.2 times more likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.
Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrates a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, was accused of being a flip-flopper for changing his mind about the conflict.
Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.
“There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science,” said Sulloway, who has written about the history of science and has studied behavioral differences between conservatives and liberals.
Exit question one: Aren’t these results more easily explained by liberals’ unusual sensitivity to the letter “W”? (Exit answer: No. They tested them with other letters.) Exit question two: How do they manage to shoulder the load of cat-like reflexes and supreme rationality?
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Oh AP for God’s sake, college students?
When they do this with 40 year olds I’ll pay attention.
swami on September 9, 2007 at 7:58 PM
Maybe conservatives get bored more easily and go into auto-pilot mode while sitting in a small cubicle waiting for the experiment to end. Liberals are fascinated by the nuance of the class conflict between the two letters.
pedestrian on September 9, 2007 at 8:02 PM
How many times can they run this story? How many angles can they employ? How many more forms can this proposition take? Good night!
Weight of Glory on September 9, 2007 at 8:02 PM
Im shocked that most didnt hit the I, R and U keys repeatedly (looking at you ROSIE)
William Amos on September 9, 2007 at 8:02 PM
Liberals are our intellectual, moral, and genetic betters. They keep saying it, so it must be true! =P
ZK on September 9, 2007 at 8:05 PM
LMAO!
JiangxiDad on September 9, 2007 at 8:06 PM
I hope that no money was taken from, say cancer research, or even jelly bean research, or even someones beer money to fund this
profoundly moronicgreat genius study.MB4 on September 9, 2007 at 8:07 PM
Well I’ve done my own study and found that liberals are 50-70 times more likely to show no brain activity when pressing keys in a profanity laden rant on the DU, HuffPo or Koz instead of a more appropriate response (not pressing the keyboard at all ).
lowandslow on September 9, 2007 at 8:08 PM
So, you scientists, when a liberal is mugged by reality and becomes a conservative, does the way his brain works change, too?
Attila (Pillage Idiot) on September 9, 2007 at 8:12 PM
AP - just emailed this to you. Funny stuff.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/2007/09/08/2007-09-08_fred_thompson_al_qaeda_smoking_ban_pushe.html
lorien1973 on September 9, 2007 at 8:12 PM
These results only show that the liberals wanted to hit both keys so they wouldn’t appear to be making a decision that counted. All that brain activity was the turmoil they were inflicting upon themselves.
Helloyawl on September 9, 2007 at 8:13 PM
Maybe the liberal elitist types have had more time playing computer games than the conservatives because the liberals don’t have to spend their time working for a living and being responsible human beings. Therefore, they were more experienced in detecting small differences on a computer screen.
TruthToBeTold on September 9, 2007 at 8:14 PM
I actually laughed. Out loud.
VolMagic on September 9, 2007 at 8:16 PM
So if you are bored by repetitious silly liberal games you are stupid. Why doesn’t this prove liberals have no freedom of choice or are rank conformists?
pat on September 9, 2007 at 8:20 PM
Ah yes, academic research. They cannot conduct research into the differences in IQ between races or sexes anymore due to the politically incorrect nature of the subject but conservatives are a target rich environment. Just design a study that makes them look like idiots and call it science. After all, it will be peer reviewed by fellow academics who already agree with the conclusion. And who knew a lack of backbone was a positive?
The Opinionator on September 9, 2007 at 8:21 PM
LOL! You win the thread.
Emilie H. on September 9, 2007 at 8:25 PM
Sometimes a
cigarletter is just acigarletter.- Sigmund Freud
MB4 on September 9, 2007 at 8:26 PM
fred5678 on September 9, 2007 at 8:29 PM
Then why is it that all liberals always use the same play book over and over when debating?
AP, you have provided a gold mine of nuanced rebuttals for debating the liberals…… ie: if you are so open for ideas why do you keep slamming me as a racist?
Precious, very precious. I’ve bookmarked this page, saved page as, saved the text to document file, sent a copy to my email inbox….
I’m telling you I’m ready, bring the blithering idiots on!
Mcguyver on September 9, 2007 at 8:29 PM
Maybe the reason liberals did not hit the “W” is because they think it stands for George “W” Bush and are conditioned to resist “W” at all cost.
As intentionally dumb (I’m a stoopid republikin) as this theory is, it is no dumber that this study.
jman on September 9, 2007 at 8:29 PM
Let’s try this again, in order not to confuse any nuanced readers:
Yes, but can they tell WHICH LETTER IS UPSIDE DOWN?
Hah - I thought not.
fred5678 on September 9, 2007 at 8:30 PM
Oh come on! It’s obvious that the conservatives, using superlative logic figured out what the test was all about and hit the wrong key the requisite number of times just to skew the results. Why? To fool the libs into complacency and keep them off balance. I wonder how the lib/conservative distinction was arrived at. Some arbitrary benchmark, a voting record or perhaps an anal extraction by some college prof. Maybe they just said on a scale of 1 to 10 how conservative are you?
Oldnuke on September 9, 2007 at 8:30 PM
There was no need to do this experiment. Liberals have always know they are much smarter than conservatives. Apparently this Berkeley researcher knew it before he started also. Isn’t “science” wonderful! This is the same kind of “science” that brought us global warming.
imshocked on September 9, 2007 at 8:31 PM
I was a liberal myself until 9/11 and real life mugged me with common sense. My brain actually works much better now, I’m very pleased with the change. Though there are still lingering side effects from my moonbat ways: I still make jewelry and collect beads and on occasion go bra-less, but on a positive note I started shaving my legs again.
Keli on September 9, 2007 at 8:32 PM
**Another precious keepsake….
Mcguyver on September 9, 2007 at 8:33 PM
I won’t even try to top that.
But I mean seriously… this is a joke, right?
keithrconrad on September 9, 2007 at 8:35 PM
Welcome!!! But watch out for AP’s growing base of soft porn fans here, about to make comments on no bras and shaving legs. See the comments at:
Video flashback: Too hot to fly, 1972 edition Update: “We move our tails for you”
Sep 8, 2007 10:45 AM by Allahpundit
fred5678 on September 9, 2007 at 8:37 PM
Mcguyver on September 9, 2007 at 8:33 PM
Gratuitous Fred -bashing on an unrelated thread? Kudos.
VolMagic on September 9, 2007 at 8:38 PM
In other words, liberals are better equipped to deal with the cognitive dissonance that liberalism seems to require. You must be able to embrace contradictory and incompatible beliefs at the same time and with equal fervor. Example: Hate America while insisting you are a true patriot. Another example: Do everything “for the children” but fight for the right to kill unborn children. Example three: Fight as hard as you can for women’s rights and freedom–unless it’s Middle Eastern women’s rights and freedom. Can you think of more examples? C’mon–it’s a fun game!
aero on September 9, 2007 at 8:42 PM
Well why the hell didn’t they also stick probes up their butts so they could tell who passes gas more when engaged in meaningless tasks: liberals or conservatives? I mean, I don’t know about the rest of you, but being forced to quickly discriminate between a W and an M would go a lot easier for me if I’d pigged out at my favorite Mexican restaurant first.
radjah shelduck on September 9, 2007 at 8:42 PM
You are mWissing the bigger, there are Conservatives at Berkley?!? I thought only terror-symWpathizers and naked bike riding, hippie tree huggers were allowed.
It mWakes you wonder if the Libs mWight have just not pressed “W” because of BDS…
Canerican on September 9, 2007 at 8:46 PM
What’s the fascination libs have with the letter “W”? Didn’t they do something to the “W” on all the White House keyboards right before Clinton left? That was right before they looted all the furniture.
repvoter on September 9, 2007 at 8:48 PM
I’ve given up nuance until after the war.
JiangxiDad on September 9, 2007 at 8:57 PM
Guilty as charged, sorry.
It belongs here.
Mcguyver on September 9, 2007 at 8:59 PM
I’m sorry. Did AP imply that he’s a conservative?
JWS on September 9, 2007 at 9:00 PM
Since “nuanced” is a quality that simply cannot be quantified, these leftist professors cling to it as an artificial measurement of liberal intelligence. How ’bout we go head to head with a good old fashioned IQ test. Let’s get 40 liberal college students and 40 conservative college students, and let’s just test their IQs. Or how about a simple reasoning test? Or a test of logic? And let’s do it blind, with the tests being scored outside of political ideology leanings. Seems simple enough. Wonder why no leftist professor has done it…
And can’t you just hear these wackademics in the lab: “I’ve already got the report written, boys, now let’s do the research and make sure it matches up!”
Rational Thought on September 9, 2007 at 9:09 PM
What I find really upsetting about this is that I’m a conservative with a genius level IQ and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get paid to do these lame studies.
jmarcure on September 9, 2007 at 9:14 PM
Nu Ance?
Isn’t she a in jail in Bhoodilicious or something?
What if you are conservative on survival issues and classically liberal on most others?
What if you like pizza and burritos and rijstafel?
Is complexity incomprehensible?
profitsbeard on September 9, 2007 at 9:16 PM
I am two stewpid to understand how this study pruves anything.
Herikutsu on September 9, 2007 at 9:23 PM
How much longer before someone publishes a study, “proving” the inferiority of conservatives, based upon
measurements of our skulls?…
Lee on September 9, 2007 at 9:33 PM
They analyzed this test backwards, all this proves is that liberals are more interested and more easily entertained with stupidly structured tests.
Liberals aren’t smarter, they’re more stupid!
Oh yea, I can see that, liberals are more likely to be truthers, believe lies about the government and black helicopter conspiracies; absolute moral authority and terrorists are just freedom fighters.
Yea, that fits, still stupid or maybe just, idiotic.
Speakup on September 9, 2007 at 9:36 PM
Sounds like the libs found a great,intreging challange.
Sounds like the rest were bored to sleep.
allrsn on September 9, 2007 at 9:37 PM
Was this study another fine example of my tax dollars at work?
morganfrost on September 9, 2007 at 9:37 PM
profitsbeard:
Then, instead of ethanol, maybe the government should be subsidizing you!
Lee on September 9, 2007 at 9:43 PM
First of all, how large was the group? Second, how many conservatives vs. libs… was it evenly divided (what if it was 10 to 1, or 100 to 1)? Third, why was this only done on students? Do I even need to explain the problems with that?
Perhaps the real answer, is that the few conservative students are paying their own way and have jobs, while the liberal students spend all their time smoking pot and playing World of Warcraft, so they’re able to quickly react to pounding keys in reaction to what’s happening on the screen. I’m half joking there, but seriously, shouldn’t one factor in how people react to things appearing on a computer screen? Put someone who’s never used a computer on one and tell them to drag and drop files from one folder to another… then compare how long it takes someone who uses computers regularly.
Ugh, why did I even respond to this? We get these stupid studies every few months, and there are always countless ways to debunk them… but they’ll keep being done. They get funding by promising to “find the answers” to something, and then they pull bullsh** like this. Regular viewers of RedEye are probably numb to this now… they talk about various “studies” so often, that they discuss some that contradict each other only weeks apart.
RightWinged on September 9, 2007 at 9:44 PM
From you link, Lee:
Refresh my memory….
… but as I recall the liberals have not advanced since the ..”Grateful Dead”……… hummmmmmmmm……….
Come to think of it the article didn’t mention whether the liberal subjects/masters were or dead alive.
This is all starting to really make sense now….
.. the last symbol they remembered before they died was “W”, as in blame everything on George W.
Mcguyver on September 9, 2007 at 9:48 PM
Well that explains the ‘results’ right there. Only in Berkeley would a moonbat researcher waste time and money on something so useless.
infidel4life on September 9, 2007 at 9:53 PM
What I find really upsetting about this is that I’m a conservative with a genius level IQ and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get paid to do these lame studies.
jmarcure on September 9, 2007 at 9:14 PM
Wear baggy pants and say “like” and “you know” a lot. That should work.
MB4 on September 9, 2007 at 9:56 PM
more brain activity must be where they come up with all their lame conspiracy theories
mfnorman on September 9, 2007 at 10:01 PM
Another outstanding liberal conclusion.
Berkley reseacher says”Liberals were 4.9 times more likely
than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits
that deal with conflicts.”
Than how do LIBERALS explain surrender in a time of WAR.
canopfor on September 9, 2007 at 10:02 PM
So liberals were five times more guilt ridden by this exercise than conservatives and all they were doing is typing the letters “M” and “W”. I bet it was typing “W” that caused all the anxiety for the liberals. This shows how easily liberals get stressed out. Good thing they didn’t sneak in a picture of George “W” during the exercise, the liberals would have been fraughting at the mouth.
Maxx on September 9, 2007 at 10:07 PM
Lee-
LOL!
Less methane, more lunch!
profitsbeard on September 9, 2007 at 10:08 PM
Fixed.
fogw on September 9, 2007 at 10:12 PM
Q: Why did the blondes get fired from the M&M factory?
A. Because they kept throwing away the WWs.
RushBaby on September 9, 2007 at 10:13 PM
See what I mean, see what I mean…. So much fodder for debate!!
Mcguyver on September 9, 2007 at 10:15 PM
Bawawawawawawawawa!!!!
Now that’s what I’m talking about!
A HotAir commentator on the job!
Mcguyver on September 9, 2007 at 10:18 PM
Liberals look at this experiment and see proof they that are more intelligent.
Conservatives look at this and make a mental note that if they need someone to perform a stupifyingly boring task, they should hire a liberal to do it.
pedestrian on September 9, 2007 at 10:19 PM
I think this more accurately shows that conservatives work harder at college and are more likely to doze when subjected to mind-numbing repetition, as opposed to liberals who have had their mind aptly prepared for such drudgery by reading Kos, smoking pot, listening to the Dead and taking “really really hard” eastern philosophy courses.
Nethicus on September 9, 2007 at 10:25 PM
Make we up mhen me have sowething morth reading…
CliffHanger on September 9, 2007 at 10:32 PM
In other words..liberals and democrats will submit, surrender and embrace the Stockholm syndrom at the drop of a hat.
No thanks!
As for this “dumb ass chickenhawk”..Sorry but I’ll keep smashing beer cans on my forehead after shooting appliances in my back yard then look through the family scrap album of my family’s 3 generations of brave servicemen going back to WWI.
But I’ll still continue to build homes for the surrender monkey “genius” liberal pricks who can’t tell a tape-measure from a screw gun.
186k on September 9, 2007 at 10:38 PM
Weird. I was on academic scholarship in college, and lived in a suite with 11 other guys who were on the same scholarship. One identified himself as “Green”, one was “Democrat”, the rest are divided between Conservative, Republican, and then a few Libertarian hangers on…
StoutRepublican on September 9, 2007 at 10:49 PM
So liberal were five times more guilt ridden….
Maxx on September 9 2007,at 10:07PM.
Your right about the pictures Maxx,they should of just showed pictures of Bush,War,Irag,Peace protests,Berkely
nude war protest marches.
Then monitor how much they squirm in there seats.
canopfor on September 9, 2007 at 10:54 PM
On the one hand, I would tend to believe that the true believers of both the left and right are more stupid–to put it crudely. Thus, this entire result, if it is meaningful at all, could be due like of discrimination between young leftist true believers and young people with fashionable politics. I have no ideas how one would distinguish them.
On the other hand, most people who aren’t true believers tend towards the superficial, which could again be characterized as stupid.
Since a close reading of the two previous paragraphs will reveal I’ve said nothing at all, I will suggest an idea for a meaningful basis for this type of research. Use the ideas in the 1964 paper by Converse entitled The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics
thuja on September 9, 2007 at 11:05 PM
Precisely !
Maxx on September 9, 2007 at 11:05 PM
This actually could have been an interesting study. I would be interested as to whether or not all of the students were asked about their computer and more importantly their video game habits. Anyone who has ever played “WarioWare” would probably complete the task flawlessly…(nerds among us can vouch for that!)
Something that “researchers” seem to forget:
Correlation does not imply causation.
Right Tracker on September 9, 2007 at 11:08 PM
Another idea struck me. I tend to argue against young right-wingers by using empirical facts. I tend to argue against young leftists by using a much higher order attack on their belief systems; that is, I characterize leftism as a bunch of half-wit wishes with little coherence.
Of course, I do provide example of contradictory leftist wishes. Perhaps, there is less difference here than I think.
thuja on September 9, 2007 at 11:11 PM
That does it. I demand the letter “M” be stricken from the English language.
flipflop on September 9, 2007 at 11:46 PM
So what it boils down to is that Conservatives are more likely to think something is significant when it isn’t. That is, they are more likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Considering today’s world, that may not be so stupid.
Indeed, these results might do nothing more than support Stalin’s view of leftist loons as “useful idiots.”
Dr. Charles G. Waugh on September 9, 2007 at 11:55 PM
oh Mother of God…
D2Boston on September 10, 2007 at 12:02 AM
I don’t need no fancy dang high falutin scientist to tell me the Dems were afraid of the letter Dubya!
sonnyspats1 on September 10, 2007 at 12:11 AM
Analyzing the data, [Berkeley researcher Frank J.] Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times more likely than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts That flight instinct is very strong in most liberals and were 2.2 times more likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.
Except when it comes to little things like logic and common scenes
there i think thats a bit better
Mojack420 on September 10, 2007 at 1:08 AM
I think the only question this answers is “what kind of idiot does a Conservative have to be to go to college at Berkeley?
I mean, how many people really believe that something like this, from the minds of doctrinaire leftists, has any validity at all? This is just public money spent on political snark in the name of “science.”
Merovign on September 10, 2007 at 1:09 AM
Isn’t a “strong conservative” at Berkeley a standard Democrat? Strong liberals are “communists” and “moderates” are radicals.
Nethicus on September 10, 2007 at 1:15 AM
So let me get this straight, a Berkely professor links intelligence with keyboarding reflexes then extrapolates that liberals and smarter than conservatives based on the results. My findings: Anyone who uses brain activity expressed in a test involving flashing letters on a screen and extrapolates it out into measurable intelligence is himself a complete idiot.
BKennedy on September 10, 2007 at 1:38 AM
Answering one of my own questions…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070909/hl_afp/scienceneuroscience_070909173324
Again, how many were libs and how many conservatives? If these were college kids, I suspect it was hard to find conservatives… and as I mentioned, libs who are getting a free ride from mommy and daddy spend their free time playing WoW can certainly react quicker to triggers on a computer screen than their conservative counterparts who have jobs.
Either way, as I said earlier, you could go on and on with the problems here… How conservative were the people… do they even know what that means? Extreme leftists think they’re mainstream these days… does that mean they were “moderates” in this study? etc. etc.
RightWinged on September 10, 2007 at 6:15 AM
Oh, and the only reason I’m back in this thread, is because I just saw this prominently featured on Yahoo!’s home page (which doesn’t surprise me at all)
RightWinged on September 10, 2007 at 6:16 AM
Of course libs are smarter than conservatives, just like people that live in mud/dung huts are smarter than northern Europeans.
It is easy to see at a glance that Rembrandt was a moron compared to Grandma Moses.
TheSitRep on September 10, 2007 at 6:47 AM
So liberals were so afraid of not being liked that they performed better. This was evidenced by the conflict centers of their brains showing activity. It was never considered that the conflict was from them being torn between wanting to be liked and wanting to shove the keyboard up the backside of the researcher for having them do this mindless task. Conservatives on the other hand did poorer because they were bored doing this mindless task. The beauty of this research is that you can draw any conclusion you want. The greater beauty is that the researcher most likely got a nice grant to conduct it.
jmarcure on September 10, 2007 at 7:28 AM
All this proves is that liberals are easily amused.
doufree on September 10, 2007 at 8:13 AM
Everybody knows that the liberal keyboards have been missing the “W” key since 2002.
Proves nothing.
landlines on September 10, 2007 at 10:37 AM
Liberals are also more likely to stand and let themselves be murdered by a crazed gunman.
Ortzinator on September 10, 2007 at 11:18 AM
Has anyone been able to find the actual data from this study?
So far people not related to the study have said that Liberals were more likely to be right than Conservatives.
However, the small amount of data I could find showed that liberals and conservatives did equally well with identifying the letter that appeared 4X more. Liberals did better at identifying the letter that appeared less (Conservatives were wrong 47% of the time and liberals were wrong 37% of the time).
One bit of data that I haven’t been able to find is if they were both averaging the same response times. I’ve seen similar studies and one of their requirements is that people respond very quickly. It’s supposed to be an instinctive reaction when you press the button. I’d be interested to know if the liberal respondents were taking longer to press the keys. If that’s the case, that would explain the increased brain activity (as it would give their brain long enough to engage) and their slightly better accuracy. It would also fit with the profile of the average liberal as someone that doesn’t follow directions too well.
JadeNYU on September 10, 2007 at 2:07 PM
I’ve got a better test idea, a survivial test. Take 10 lib’s & 10 conservatives. At random points car jack them to gauge their response. In my non-expert non-scientific consensus building opinion, I would place survival rate at 10-20% for the lib’s and 10-20% survivial for the car jacker in the conservative case.
First the research that men prefer hot chicks to ugly and now this study. Couldn’t this money go to something worthwhile like a bridge in Alaska? Oh that’s right, that’s already funded.
How about a study on the effectiveness of a border fence?
VikingGoneWild on September 10, 2007 at 3:30 PM
Precisely my point.
Dr. Charles G. Waugh on September 10, 2007 at 3:42 PM
Evidence of what I was talking about earlier… why libs are so good at keyboard pounding:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kBVmfIUR1DA
RightWinged on September 10, 2007 at 3:53 PM
It only proves that libs make better chimps.
jdkchem on September 10, 2007 at 4:01 PM
Hmm, I was a lib in college, now I’m a conservative, so a study of college students doesn’t really reflect the larger population. Many people who are libs when young grow out of it.
If they did this test on the Berkeley campus they would have had a hard time finding conservatives. That in itself could skew the results.
Snidely Whiplash on September 10, 2007 at 6:33 PM