Reconfirmed

Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism

1. Scott Eidelman eidelman@uark.edu
2. Christian S. Crandall
3. Jeffrey A. Goodman
4. John C. Blanchar

Abstract

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.

I lifted the whole abstract from Personality and Sociology Bulletin, dated March 16 this year (full text is behind the Pay Wall).  This thing looks pretty much like a "me too" study that confirms at least a coupla previous studies that arrived at the same basic conclusions - that an awful lot of people we call "conservatives" aren't thinking for themselves.

I'll take one more step and say it means they're just kinda going along; it's fashionable to bitch about government and taxes and spending and Welfare cheats and and and.  Most of us don't have the luxury of time to stop and think things thru.  We're under the gun to perform at jobs where we keep working a little harder and keep getting treated a little shittier.  But we're told we're lazy and we aren't working hard enough.

We see The Dow peek up over 13,000, and we hear a fair bit about how well the really Big Companies are doing, but if we stop to take account of where we are in our own lives, the contrast seems pretty stark.  Company Pensions practically don't exist, and 401k's or 403b's or whatever got scrubbed clean in 2007/2008.  Banks screwed the pooch so badly that tens of trillions of dollars in Net Worth for "average" families simply disappeared.  But what are we told now?  We're told we haven't saved enough.

We try to get the kids ready for launch, but the price of schooling is thru the roof.  And I'm not just talking about the ridiculous costs of college here.  "Free Public Education" my ass.

We look for jobs that we can do, only to find that most of the jobs are all about National Security or Defense Industries.  And what we're told is that we haven't kept up with our own retraining and continuing education.  Which just means that we haven't spent the last 8 years in the military, having our opinions and attitudes drilled into us.

So anyway - there's a lot of general fucked-up-edness right now, and there's a lot reasons for that general fucked-up-edness, and believe it or not there's a lot we can do about it.  But none of it fits on a fucking bumper sticker.

If "liberal" is opposite "conservative", and if "conservative" means you're reactionary and reflexive and you don't think for yourself, then OK - call me liberal.  But ya gotta remember the rules - if you're calling yourself a "conservative", then you don't really don't know what the fuck you're talking about.