Conservative Politics, 'Low-Effort' Thinking Linked In New Study

Faith1960 · #1 Apr 11, '12, 2:17 pm

What exactly does this mean and can someone help me find a study or information refuting this?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...6pLid%3D151166

iamrefreshed · #2 Apr 11, '12, 2:27 pm

I would try but I look so silly when my neanderthal unibrow is knit in thought.

irishpatrick · #3 Apr 11, '12, 2:44 pm

LOL

How do they explain the many thousands, if not millions, who were once on the left (quite strongly so), and then as they matured, they moved to the right (or conservative) side? Did the switch to the conservative side for those people mean that they suddenly had intelligence sucked from their brains?

**estesbob** · #4 Apr 11, '12, 2:44 pm

My knuckles are so bruised from dragging on the ground i cant type a long response........

april32010 · #5 Apr 11, '12, 3:05 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by estesbob

My knuckles are so bruised from dragging on the ground i cant type a long response........

april32010 · #6 Apr 11, '12, 3:05 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by iamrefreshed

I would try but I look so silly when my neanderthal unibrow is knit in thought.

irishpatrick · #7 Apr 11, '12, 3:10 pm

For a different take, go here: http://reflectionsofarationalrepubli...conservatives/

St Francis · #8 Apr 11, '12, 3:14 pm

First, we don't know who these people were whom they interviewed, nor do we know what they asked them. So, we don't really know anything about this study which is said by those who carried it out to indicate that people who are distracted or drunk tend to give conservative answers to questions. Nor do we know anything about what transpired when the people were not distracted or drunk and tended to respond, when challenged, in a more liberal way (I assume).

So, you have a drunk college student, say, who is asked a gazillion questions by, say, a snooty sort of woman, and he just wants to get rid of her so he gives her answers like, Yeah, I think women were put on earth to serve men, or whatever.

The next day, when still somewhat hungover, he's hauled in at 7 am and given really incomprehensible liberal arguments to some of his previous night's statements, and voila! it turns out that he doesn't really think that way.

I mean, I'm not saying that the study actually was like that, but that we have been given insufficient information on which to base any thought on the matter.

**po18guy** · #9 Apr 11, '12, 3:19 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Faith1960

What exactly does this mean and can someone help me find a study or information refuting this?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...6pLid%3D151166

The Huffington Enquirer? I would avoid it at all costs. If you scour the article, you will likely find that it refutes itself.

Garyjohn2 · #10 Apr 11, '12, 3:23 pm

Oh, it's easy to poke holes and weak points in studies of ALL kinds.

The first study mentioned:

...children who score low on intelligence tests gravitate toward socially conservative political views in adulthood.

You'd really have to take a look at how they rated intelligence, what they considered "conservative political views", how they define "gravitate", and how they played with the numbers. For example, someone could have done a study in a conservative county that was riddled with poverty. Lack of funds meant poor educational system. Therefore: the study shows that children which scored low on intelligence tests turned out to be conservative. It doesn't make any sense to try to draw meaning out of that situation...but you can still say its a true statement. Alternatively, they could have done a nation-wide study and discovered that out of all low-testing children, 49.5% were liberal as adults and 50.5% were conservative. That means they "gravitate" towards conservative views. Still a true statement, but statistically irrelevant. Unfortunately, we'll probably never know how the study was conducted, or how the journalist interprets the results.

Next, is the other study:

But it wasn't just the alcohol talking, according to the statement. When the researchers conducted similar interviews in the lab, they found that people who were asked to evaluate political ideas quickly or while distracted were more likely to express conservative viewpoints.

So does that mean its "low" or "lazy" thinking, or does that mean that the people were thinking with their gut, whats really in their heart....instead of sugar-coating or giving overly diplomatic answers? What kind of answers qualified as "conservative" or "progressive" anyways?

Imagine a person who has been drinking OR is distracted, and you ask them if they support gay marriage. They say "no." They truly believe that, and state it up front. The researchers mark it as a conservative answer. Now imagine the same person, who has time to think about their answer. They may say "well, marriage is something really specific and special. But all people should be treated with equal respect, and its ok if the government allows some kind of union between gay couples." Researchers mark it as a liberal response...even though its in essence the same answer.

This is just one possible way the study could have gone...there are hundreds of others! It's frustrating to see such a study represented the way it is being portrayed in this article though. It's sad and frustrating...because the "behind the curtains" stuff that makes up the meat of the study are not available or apparent in the article.

I'd go by the old adage: the truth is in the wine. People who are drunk or distracted are probably saying how they REALLY feel.

oldcelt · #11 Apr 11, '12, 3:31 pm

I knew it all along. Just glad that something as unbiased as the Huffington verified it for me.

John

**Ridgerunner** · #12 Apr 11, '12, 3:31 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by po18guy

The Huffington Enquirer? I would avoid it at all costs. If you scour the article, you will likely find that it refutes itself.

I agree. If the HuffPo said the sun would rise in the east tomorrow morning, I would at least be tempted to look for it in the west.

But that aside, think about the proposition for a moment. Is "low-effort" thinking always bad? Is "high-effort" thinking always good?

If I find a coyote in my yard, foaming at the mouth and running around in circles, low-effort thinking is "Possibly Rabies. Unacceptable risk. Shoot now!" My high-effort thinking might go like this:

"Coyotes are wild creatures. They are as entitled as we are to space and freedom on this earth. Their lives are as precious as ours are. Perhaps that poor animal is thirsty. Possibly he has run into some toxic manmade substance that has affected his salivary glands. Perhaps, since he cannot speak, he is running in circles because he has observed not only that humans respect circles (tires, earrings, moonlight coven gatherings, etc) but because he is trying to somehow communicate to me that the great "circle of life" imposes on me the duty to aid every creature as i would a human being. Therefore, I will go up to him and see what else he wishes to communicate to me."

Sorry. Couldn't resist!

JNdoum · #13 Apr 11, '12, 3:54 pm

It's actually an excellent peice of modern Yellow Journalism, which I am coming to see is alive and well today. How can you rate low intelligence in people, and based on what? What did they qualify as distracted in lab researchers? What the heck does being distracted have to do with your opinions? If I was in the middle of writing a treatise on string theory, and someone asked me whether I though it'd be cool for them to kill my father, I'd tell them no. If I were stone drunk and someone asked me if it'd be cool if they raped my sibling, I'd say no. What does thinking have to do with it?

Rainaldo · #14 Apr 11, '12, 3:55 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Faith1960

What exactly does this mean and can someone help me find a study or information refuting this?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...6pLid%3D151166

Simplest refutation:

Liberals think harder ... because they have to.

Digitonomy · #15 Apr 11, '12, 4:05 pm

With stories like this, it often helps to read the paper itself.

Here is the abstract:

Quote:

The authors test the hypothesis that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism. In Study 1, alcohol intoxication was measured among bar patrons; as blood alcohol level increased, so did political conservatism (controlling for sex, education, and political identification). In Study 2, participants under cognitive load reported more conservative attitudes than their no-load counterparts. In Study 3, time pressure increased participants’ endorsement of conservative terms. In Study 4, participants considering political terms in a cursory manner endorsed conservative terms more than those asked to cogitate; an indicator of effortful thought (recognition memory) partially mediated the relationship between processing effort and conservatism. Together these data suggest that political conservatism may be a process consequence of low-effort thought; when effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases.

The other thing that would help here would be a sample of the questions used in Kerlinger's Social Attitudes Statement Scale, and his Social Referents Scale, the two political surveys used in this paper. Unfortunately, those articles are not free and I don't feel like trekking down to the library to access them there.