News > Politics > How to Spot a Conservative Before He Hatches

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THURSDAY MARCH 23 2006 2:32 PM

How to Spot a Conservative Before He Hatches

Submitted by Dead_Ringer

Edited by Shal

Remember that kid in your kindergarten class who incessantly whined about how it wasnt fair that the kids who played well with others, shared, didnt throw tantrums, and at least attempted to pay attention to the teacher, got more favorable attention and praise?

How bout the kid in high school who mocked and resented the students who got decent grades, read Crime and Punishment, as assigned and not the Cliff Notes, and in turn were given greater freedom to explore their own interests, and were generally permitted to use the lavatory without having their hands held?

Well, psychology professor, Jack Block, of the University of California Berkeley might just have an explanation as to why the above children behaved the way they did, and no doubt, still do:

They are Conservatives.

Oh, dont you worry, you rabid free-thinking liberals, according to an article published in the Toronto Star, he has the research to back it up:

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.

There you have it, folks. Unbiased science clearly and unambiguously now tells us that liberals are genetically predisposed toward being superior-thinking adults, and we can glean this valuable information right from childhood.

Feel free to search for your former whiny classmates at Little Green Footballs, and let them display for themselves the truth of the good Professors study.

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Comments

alpha_hazard

Fort Collins, CO

April 2004

MAR 23, 2006 02:45 PM

I can't wait to see kindergarteners using political slams against each other.

TakesATrainToCry

Ann Arbor, MI

October 2004

MAR 23, 2006 02:54 PM

I wonder what the fascist chicken/fascist egg relationship is here. While I have no trouble believing that some amount of what makes a person conservative is nature, I suspect that the nurture side is just as important. Conservative parents whine about 'entitlements' and 'affirmative action', so their kids go to school and ape that behavior. This might tell us that 'liberals are genetically predisposed toward being superior-thinking adults,' and it might tell us that conservatives just make lousy parents.

And I should point out that I grew up in a conservative household, so I'm not accusing your Limbaugh Letter subscribing dad of being a terrible person.

sirloins

Huntington Beach, CA

October 2005

MAR 23, 2006 03:12 PM

Telling who the Republican parents are is easy. They're the ones with their kids on leashes.

hadees

Austin, TX

December 2003

MAR 23, 2006 03:52 PM

Here are some more info that should have been in the orginal newswire post because it raises some really interesting points.

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?

I also noticed the article makes no mention of if this study was peer reviewed or not.

adjunct

Philadelphia, PA

July 2002

MAR 23, 2006 04:11 PM

hadees said:
I also noticed the article makes no mention of if this study was peer reviewed or not.

I'm not even sure the publication's name is right. A search for the journal turns up blogs. Plus two citations that are over ten years old.

[Edited on Mar 23, 2006 by adjunct]

rowsofhouses

I'm lost

July 2005

MAR 23, 2006 04:25 PM

This could get messy.

I will say, however, that "an insecure little boy raised in Idaho or Alberta" does indeed grow up to be liberal.

Steak-eating, cowboy-hat-wearing, homophobe assholes are nothing I'd like to emulate anyway.

Ecto_Cooler

Bronx, NY

April 2004

MAR 23, 2006 04:29 PM

marcello said:
I wonder what the fascist chicken/fascist egg relationship is here. While I have no trouble believing that some amount of what makes a person conservative is nature, I suspect that the nurture side is just as important. Conservative parents whine about 'entitlements' and 'affirmative action', so their kids go to school and ape that behavior. This might tell us that 'liberals are genetically predisposed toward being superior-thinking adults,' and it might tell us that conservatives just make lousy parents.

And I should point out that I grew up in a conservative household, so I'm not accusing your Limbaugh Letter subscribing dad of being a terrible person.

Heh. My mom protested the Vietnam war, went to the original Woodstock and has been arrested for civil disobedience, yet according to some people here, I've grown up to become a Rush Limbaugh. (I consider myself a moderate, and I think most people who don't post on SG or Metafilter would agree with that label.)

So while I think parents are a big influence on their children politically in some cases, it's not a surefire thing. I also think there's some truth to the theory that most people become more conservative as they age. That's not to say they become conservatives in the strict sense, just that people's views shift rightward.

I do, however, have a hard time believing the findings of this study. My experience suggests assholes can be found across the political spectrum.

fountainofdreams

Batavia, IL

January 2005

MAR 23, 2006 05:06 PM

while i certainly think dead_ringer's being SOMEWHAT facetious in this...it's still pretty funny. as much as certain high-profile newspeople or commentators make broadly ridiculous claims about "libruls,", it's about damn time they got a taste of their own medicine.