Quote (Thor123422 @ Feb 12 2021 05:58am)
Yeah, it's kinda unfortunate. Like, young liberals can be smug, condescending, etc. but young conservatives are just nasty and generally much more malicious.
That's true of conservatives in general though. More emotionally motivated, especially by fear, anger and disgust. (This is what the science says, not my opinion) So that evolves as personal slights and malicious attacks on the out-group.
I would be shocked if you can find a study that concludes with the slant you presented here. The study authors often go so far as to state explicitly not to draw these sort of conclusions.
Quote (Thor123422 @ Feb 12 2021 07:25am)
I've posted the sources at least a dozen times and it's 6 a.m. here. I'll give you some brief descriptions.
Give a group of people political poll. Sort them on a spectrum of conservative to liberal. Show them pictures of nice things, show them pictures of bad things. Ask them to describe their responses. Conservatives have a stronger negative response to negative pictures, focused around fear, anger, and disgust. Repeat the experiment but with the participants hooked up to an FMRI and conservatives elicit more response in the amygdala, which deals with emotional memory and especially fear and disgust. Show pictures of immigrants and people in poor areas and the like, liberals register a stronger compassion and frontal lobe response, conservatives register a stronger disgust and amygdala response. Jury is still out on if it's an innate biological thing, where your genes influence the more active part of the brain, or if it's learned, or what age it's learned by if so. Response is very robust and has been repeated many times.
Sort people into groups, give them an arbitrary identifier. Ask them to assign others arbitrary scores. Conservatives have a stronger preference for others who have identifiers in common, even when they are arbitrarily assigned.
Now my favorite, because it was super relevant to Trump vs Obama. Show a conservatives somebody of the same race versus a different race. Both groups get the same vague statement. Conservatives tend to assign the same-race person more favorable interpretations of the same statement.
Anyway, there's a lot of literature on the subject and it's an interesting read. Conservative preference for in-group, stronger disgust and fear response, and more activity in the amygdala has been repeated many times.
Most racial / ethnic groups demonstrate significant and persistent in-group bias. It's healthy social behavior. White liberals are perhaps the only group that appear to demonstrate an out-group preference. I won't say that it's unhealthy per say, but it's certainly something that's worth studying. It certainly seems to feed into the way that they look at the world as binary between oppressors (i.e. whites) and the oppressed. It is particularly evident in foreign affairs, where the need to apply a black and white moral frame leads to sympathy for terrorists and terroristic regimes (e.g. Iran).
Conservatives do appear to have a larger fear response. Liberals may deal better with uncertain situations. Conservatives are happier with large social circles. Liberals are less happy and prone to anxiety. These are limited conclusions, I would be very hesitant to draw anything more firm.
Quote (Thor123422 @ Feb 12 2021 09:00am)
You should definitely read more on the subject. It's pretty interesting.
Another one that was fun was if you give conservatives and liberals a game where you wager, and it randomly assigns you a win or loss, but weight it so that you lose many more times than you win, conservatives will tend to play less and liberals will tend to play more. The reason is because liberals tended to play analytically and looked for patterns in bet amounts vs results, so they lost more than conservatives who just saw the losing pattern and stopped.
Conservatives have their place. They tend to limit losses and define boundaries. Liberals tend to explore and push boundaries. When things are functioning properly conservatives keep the liberals from jumping off a cliff as they explore. When things aren't functioning properly conservatives reinforce systems that don't work, and liberals jump head first off cliffs.
In America at least, we're basically stuck in a bunch of crap systems because we are pathologically prevented from exploring new ones even when the abundance of evidence shows they are better. You can say that liberals are jumping off the social cliff, but pushing boundaries is their function and it's been less than a decade since they got gay marriage legalized so it's less likely they're jumping off a cliff.
It sounds like conservatives identified the correct pattern. The game is rigged.