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-alcohol intoxication
-being distracted
-time pressure/incapable of thinking things through
-not really trying to understand things/intellectual laziness
-being attracted to easier-to-understand language/being less educated/less literate
Let the 'I know you are, but what am I' contest begin.
I've only briefly skimmed the study at this point, but I don't think they defined low effort in the way you are.
Just as an example, in the second study (of four), they were asking political questions to people who were simultaneously preforming a second task, as well as a control group not preforming a secondary task. More of the people with more time to think, when asked political questions, leaned more liberal in their answer, while those who were preoccupied, answered more conservative.
Now, my argument against you, is that common sense has nothing to do with politics. Common sense is for simple things, like individual interaction. The things that maybe could be common sense in politics are not really attached to either liberalism or conservatism (such as, voting being important). Obviously, both sides, when in a position of weakness, will simply say that common sense is on their side, though I think they're all full of it.
Liberalism has traditionally referred to support for the freedom of the individual and government protection of individual rights and liberties. The people this study refers to as "liberals" are progressives, who branched off from liberals in the early 19th century. The only thing modern progressives are liberal with, generally, is other people's money. To me, progressives can be thought of as left-wing conservatives as they're far less "liberal" than classical liberals.
The general classification of "conservative" and "liberal" in studies like this tends to be rather nonsensical and only loosely based on anything objective, as in this study:
Quote:
Conservative political ideology in Western democracies may
be identified by several components, including an emphasis
on personal responsibility, acceptance of hierarchy, and a
preference for the status quo.
Firstly, it does not get any more hierarchical than a powerful centralized federal government. Grover Norquist wants to shrink government down to the size where it can be drowned in the bathtub, Bernie Sanders wants to massively expand it. Which is more accepting of hierarchy? Are the ranchers in Oregon, Kim Davis, Timothy McVeigh accepting of hierarchy? Clearly not. Are those "intransigent" Republicans who refuse to cooperate with the President of the United States accepting of hierarchy?
Conservatives do tend to be more supportive of police. However, it would seem that acceptance of hierarchy tends to be largely a function of whether or not that hierarchy is deemed legitimate or aligned with one's own interests. Conservatives generally support the police because they view them as protecting their interests, e.g. protecting them from theft, robbery, vandalism, etc. Progressives tend to oppose the police because they see them as oppressors who harass minorities.
Secondly, the status quo changes over time. If "conservatives" favor the status quo and "liberals" oppose it, then "conservative" and "liberal" have no real meaning. They're simply a function of whatever the status quo is at any particular time. Whichever group's ideas become the status quote then becomes the "conservatives" and the other group becomes the "liberals." If "conservatives" favor the status quo, then communists in the USSR in the 1980s were conservatives, and those advocating for free markets were liberals.
The other typical problem with studies like this is that the researchers tend to focus on the subjects in which conservatives engage in low-effort thought, while ignoring those in which progressives do. This is not surprising as the researchers tend to be progressives themselves, and typically start with a conclusion that they hope to find evidence to support (as in this study). A conclusion which just so happens to align with their own political beliefs.
From my experience, conservatives and progressives both tend to rely on low-effort thought, the primary difference is in regards to the subjects on which this low-effort thought predominates. Conservatives tend to exhibit low-effort, hysterical thought processes in regards to things like gay marriage, e.g. if we allow gay people to marry then society will go to hell in a hand basket and people will start marrying goats. Progressives tend to exhibit low-effort, hysterical thought processes in regards to economics, e.g. rent control and foreign trade.
From this study:
Quote:
(One term, government price controls, was
removed from the liberalism subscale because more than
15% of participants in the high time pressure condition were
unable to respond in the allotted time, and responses to this
items were negatively correlated with the remaining items.)
The subscales were reliable (αs = .84 and .78 for conservatism
and liberalism, respectively) and uncorrelated, r = −.17, p > .31.
Price controls are one of the prime examples of an issue in which progressives tend to exhibit low-effort thought processes. In this case price controls were apparently removed from the liberalism scale partially because they didn't exhibit the desired outcome.
Quote:
Measurement of political attitudes. We again used terms
from the SRS to measure political ideology. A total of
30 terms were chosen; 15 measured political conservatism
(α = .77) and 15 measured political liberalism (α = .80; one
item, capitalism, was removed from the conservatism scale
because it was negatively correlated with the remaining
items).
Capitalism is removed here apparently because it didn't produce the desired result.
Another example of a subject in which progressives tend to exhibit low-effort thinking: Ask them if they think "hate speech" should be against the law. But you will typically not find such questions in these studies. Unfortunately with this study, as seems to be the norm, the researchers do not provide you with the actual questions that were used.
Last edited by EugeneOnegin; 06-11-2016 at 11:40 AM..
-alcohol intoxication
-being distracted
-time pressure/incapable of thinking things through
-not really trying to understand things/intellectual laziness
-being attracted to easier-to-understand language/being less educated/less literate
Let the 'I know you are, but what am I' contest begin.
It wasn't conservatives nancy pelosi spoke to when she said, 'we have to pass it to find out what is in it'.
And not a peep from the dem liberal base. Lack of curiosity and misplaced trust characterize liberal dems.
When obama says we don't want to take your guns, harken back to the tiome he asked us to trust him and believe you can keep your doctor if you like your doctor....and to make that crystal clear, Obama then said PERIOD.....no stings attached. So to doubt his word on any other issue makes one a conservative? Then that is a good thing.
The biggest problem for progressives with these studies is when libertarians or classical liberals are included:
Quote:
Next up is a measure called the Need for Cognition scale which tries to gauge the extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities. Again, libertarians outscored both conservatives and liberals. The researchers also found that libertarians tend to be less flummoxed by various moral dilemmas such as the famous “trolley problem.” In the trolley problem, five workmen will be killed by a runaway trolley unless you, in the non-aversive case (1) move a track switch which will divert the train but kill one workman, or in the aversive case (2) push a fat man off a bridge stopping the trolley. Typically, most people will choose to move the switch, but refuse to push the fat man. Why the difference? The utilitarian moral calculus is the same—save five by killing one. In fact, the researchers find that libertarians are more likely to resolve moral dilemmas by applying this utilitarian calculus than are either liberals or conservatives.
There you have it: liberals exhibit lower need for cognition than libertarians.
Another one that found that classical liberals are more intelligent than liberals/progressives:
Quote:
Research has consistently shown that intelligence is positively correlated with socially liberal beliefs and negatively correlated with religious beliefs. This should lead one to expect that Republicans are less intelligent than Democrats. However, I find that individuals who identify as Republican have slightly higher verbal intelligence than those who identify as Democrat (2–5 IQ points), and that individuals who supported the Republican Party in elections have slightly higher verbal intelligence than those who supported the Democratic Party (2 IQ points). I reconcile these findings with the previous literature by showing that verbal intelligence is correlated with both socially and economically liberal beliefs (β = .10–.32). My findings suggest that higher intelligence among classically liberal Republicans compensates for lower intelligence among socially conservative Republicans.
From The Better Angles of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, by cognitive scientist Steven Pinker:
Quote:
And now for a correlation that will annoy the left as much as the correlation with liberalism annoyed the right. The economist Bryan Caplan also looked at data from the General Social Survey and found that smarter people tend to think more like economists (even after statistically controlling for education, income, sex, political party, and political orientation). They are more sympathetic to immigration, free markets, and free trade, and less sympathetic to protectionism, make-work policies, and government intervention in business. Of course none of these positions is directly related to violence. But if one zooms out to the full continuum on which these policies lie, one could argue that the direction that is aligned with intelligence is also the direction that has historically pointed peaceward. To think like an economist is to accept the theory of gentle commerce from classical liberalism, which touts the positive-sum payoffs of exchange and its knock-on benefit of expansive networks of cooperation. That sets it in opposition to populist, nationalist, and communist mindsets that see the world's wealth as zero-sum and infer that the enrichment of one group must come at the expense of another. The historical result of economic illiteracy has often been ethnic and class violence, as people conclude that the have-nots can improve their lot only by forcibly confiscating wealth from the haves and punishing them for their avarice. As we saw in chapter 7, ethnic riots and genocides have declined since World War II, especially in the West, and a greater intuitive appreciation of economics may have played a part (lately there ain't been much work on account of the economy). At the level of international relations, trade has been superseding beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism over the past half-century and, together with democracy and an international community, has contributed to a Kantian Peace.
Last edited by EugeneOnegin; 06-11-2016 at 11:57 AM..
I don't know if it's still in print but I highly recommend the book, "Intellectuals and Society." It is not about intellectuals in their chosen field but it's about intellectuals who have pontificated outside of their area of expertise throughout history and who have influenced public opinion and the course of events. From the book jacket:
"Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyses the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society --- and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views."
I just looked it up. I see it has been revised and expanded and that the paperback version is in print.
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