How to Spot a Baby Conservative
But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids’ personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There’s no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it’s unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.
A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.
The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.
Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative of the whole country. But within his sample, he says, the results hold. He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial.
5 Comments:
like this is news to any one of us. at least now we can point to proof.
GW is a great example of this.
Another friend forwarded me this study...
I love it: some more fodder for the shots I fire at my "conservative" friends. (Conservative is in quotes since there's nothing truly 'conservative' about this administration).
let's see kids that always want the attention, always want the biggest slice of cake, always compain about chores, always complain they are the last ones picked for a team.
It's never their fault, it's always somebody's else's fault. GW, it's not my fault, nobody told me the WMD's weren't there.
Geez, this is making more sense all the time.
Fit's the wicked witch of the East perfectly (Coulter).
I too was a liberal until I got a job. Then I saw how much of my paycheck was going to those stupid wealth redistribution programs that don't work- and it changed me forever.
Speaking of money...
Unfortunately I think there is a huge financial grain of truth in what Reign said... this administration is spending way too much to be conservative.
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