A study funded by the US government has
concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of
neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the
intolerance of ambiguity". As if that was not enough to get
Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler,
Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh,
arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.
All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned
inequality".
Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the
report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received
$1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science
Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who
turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference
for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.
"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the
familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic clichés
and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.
One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the
aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could
explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that
contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to
trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that
conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are
necessarily false".
Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he
had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted
that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all".
"The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he
said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and
commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity,
but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."
But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post
columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted,
tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations
of our psychological needs and neuroses."
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1017505,00.html
15aug03
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