Linked from Drudge  - Here's a new study that was released today:

How to spot a baby conservative
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

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 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.

Jordan .

Come now, how can any of that 95 sample grow up to be conservatives when they all come from Berkeley? There are no conservatives in Berkeley period. None.

Kurt Kleiner is a Toronto-based freelance science writer.

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Yeah, buuuuuuuuut, it's soooooooooooo not faaaaaaaaaaiiirrrr, she whined. Teeeeeeeacccccccccherrrrrrrrrrr, maaaaaaaaake theeeeeeemmmmmm ssssssssstttttttooooooooop! They'rrrrrrrrre soooooooooo meeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaan.

I'm sorry little Susie. But it's S-C-I-E-N-C-E.

But it's nooooooottttt faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaair!!!

Life isn't fair, Susie. We in the SCIENTIFIC community have been deeply immersed in SCIENTIFIC studies of this pressing matter for nearly a quarter of a century. It's just the way it is! I went into this study completely open-minded. No preconceived notions of what I might discover by tracking 95 Berkeley kindergardeners. Truth is truth. Now stop your whiiiiiiiiiiiiiining and live with it!

...but seriously...

Maybe things have changed in the classroom (Oh, I'm certain they have!) but in My Day I can't remember whiny kids going to the teacher to tattle. The teacher was in front of the class. The students sat in their chairs until there was a "duck and cover" exercise anyway. It's hard to imagine anyone running to a parental authority figure whose salary is paid by the state and pleading for help to fight the "little 'uns" battles, as much of a "conservative" methodology as that may seem on the face of it.

Ah well, for a longest time I've expressed an abundance of empathy for the left, recognizing their meager contributions to current public policy making and governing. I've encouraged them in their quest to come up with new puppets -- new signs and slogans -- new chants. I think it's just dandy that they can also add to their collective job description -- Academic Scientific Studies!

On second thought, maybe this is just another TRICK coming from those who appreciate complexity and nuance! Maybe they're trying to TRICK us!!!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

In Canada, my friend, calling a non-Torontonian a Torontonian is grounds for a duel.  STAND AND DELIVER!

Mon dieu!  Can't say I didn't see that coming, Raymond! It would be almost as bad if you called Danwhy a "Newfie!"  Geez, you have to be sensitive with citizens of certain countries, doncha know? It's oot and oot insulting to assume they're interchangable just because they're Canucks Canadians.

Q : How many Canadians does it take to change a lightbulb?

A : None. Canadians don't change light bulbs, they accept them as they are!

Susan

USA

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Well, we're having Almost-Becoming-Springtime weather today, so I'm in a forgiving mood.