Scientific Medical Analysis: Dem and GOP Political Thinking Differences

American Political Division at it's Very Worse

Introduction – Ref from the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences and posted here from Mother Jones.

Extract for the open-minded: In their 2014 issue this conclusion from the medical experts:

“A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology and even traits like physiology and genetics.”

That’s a big deal. It challenges everything that we thought we knew about politics — upending the idea that we get our beliefs solely from our upbringing, from our friends and families, from our personal economic interests, and calling into question the notion that in politics, we can really change (most of us, anyway).

During the 1860s, Republicans, who dominated northern states, orchestrated an ambitious expansion of federal power, helping to fund the transcontinental railroad, the state university system and the settlement of the West by homesteaders, and instating a national currency and protective tariff.

Democrats, who dominated the South, opposed these measures. After the Civil War, Republicans passed laws that granted protections for African Americans and advanced social justice; and again, Democrats largely opposed these expansions of power.

Sound like an alternate universe of today? Yes it does.

Fast forward to 1936. Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt won reelection that year on the strength of the New Deal, a set of Depression-remedying reforms including regulation of financial institutions, founding of welfare and pension programs, infrastructure development and more. Roosevelt won in a landslide against Republican Alf Landon, who opposed these exercises of federal power.

These are five core personality traits that many psychologists use for assessment.

·        openness to experience

·        conscientiousness

·        extraversion

·        agreeableness 

·        neuroticism

Liberals and Conservatives consistently differ only on a few of those five core traits, like these differences for example: 

•         Liberals are more open to new experiences, novelty, disruption
•         Liberals are more tolerant of mess, ambiguity, uncertainty
• 
  
•         Conservatives prefer tidiness, clarity, certainty
•         Conservatives prefer stability and the status quo

Yale psychologist Dan Kahan in cultural cognition divides views along two dimensions: Hierarchical vs. Egalitarian, and Individualist vs. Communitarian.

This creates a four-quadrant space which shows that conservatives are hierarchical-individualists and shows this about conservatives in general – that they:

·        Adopt and Cling to: Social conservative platform.

·        Firmly believes in: Christianity as the basis for all decisions.

·        Emphasis: On the family with strong moral value (except theirs).

·        Against: Any form of abortion and gay marriage.

·        Believe in and practice: Paleo-conservatives who are against immigration into the United States.

·        Believe: Our military should guard the boarders and not be stationed in foreign countries.

·        Believe: In only lower taxes to stimulate the economy.

·        Against: Most if not all public assistance, Unions, public employees, and public education.

·        Advocate for: Smaller government and wide reduced spending.

·        Believe in: Privatizing Social Security and turning Medicare into a voucher program.

·        Hate: ACA (Obamacare) and Want it repealed and replaced with their “plan.”

·        Love guns: And, the more the merrier – with hands off policy willy-nilly. including “open carry” like the Wild, Wild West days of “Hang ‘em High Judge Roy Bean: Bring in the guilty bastard, give him a fair trial, then hang him.   

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Summary as it were: Yeah, that brand of GOP conservative America … boy, oh, boy. Duck!!! What duck???

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