<p>I thought this was an interesting article</p>
<p><a href=“Breaking News - Headlines & Top Stories | The Star”>Breaking News - Headlines & Top Stories | The Star;
<p>“Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative of the whole country.”</p>
<p>That is so incredibly biased. Do that same test in a heavily conservative state or city and see what happens. That’s a joke.</p>
<p>Perhaps the fact that liberal students were more confident and outgoing has something to do with the fact that they grew up in a liberal area. The conservative students, being more in the minority, sought more structure and acceptance in dogma and the like. Although I would love to believe that all liberals, myself included, are naturally confident, outgoing, better looking and whatever other claims the study made, I don’t think that the claim can be sufficiently substantiated (or at least not without a more detailed explanation of methods and conclusions). It’s an interesting area of study though.</p>
<p>I suspect that whiny kids grow up to be whiny adults…</p>
<p>excuse me while I go complain about a few things…</p>
<p>Who is funding these studies? W.T.F???</p>
<p>95 students!?</p>
<p>There is nothing statistically significant about 95 at all. You can’t tell anything about society from 95 students anymore than you can by taking one photo of an airplane crashing and say all airplanes crash.</p>
<p>Talk about sloppy, useless research.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>1) Start with the Mickey-mouse premise that creativity, intellect and preference are pre-determined, beyond choice (a largely liberal premise), either genetically or environmentally; that all ideas are putty, quantity without quality. </p>
<p>2) Stick a tack into a map and pop a hole into Berkeley California: call it a rat-hole. </p>
<p>3) Regard your human subjects as custodial lab-rats and circle back to your mouse-house deterministic premise. </p>
<p>1) Voila, it turns out your Mickey-mouse premise was identical to your Mickey-mouse conclusion: The social-science of a theme-park!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>looks like some of the conservatives on this board are…</p>
<p>whining?</p>
<p>Three blind mice,
Three blind mice
See how they run,
See how they run!</p>
<p>They all ran after
The farmer’s wife
She cut off their tails
With a carving knife
Did you ever see
Such a sight in your life
As three blind mice? </p>
<p>…actually, singing. Some are just too tune-deaf to hear it.</p>
<p>Even if that study reached the opposite conclusion, I would still dislike it for the simple reason that it’s bad science. “Social science” is a misnomer - any scientist would rip that to shreds - it’s just a bad experiment.</p>
<p>Double-blind! Double blind! Who does the measuring? Nursery school teachers, who don’t like the conservative parents - being a very liberal group themselves? The kids themselves - skewed by parental influences (and parents are a big factor in determining whether a kid is conservative or liberal)? The parents - “Yeah, my kid is a whiny brat - he expects everyone else to provide for him instead of doing things on his own.” Doesn’t pass muster as good science.</p>
<p>Geography - why not measure strongly conservative areas and see if the results still hold true? The conclusion is overly broad for such a small study - in Berkeley, Cal, there were probably about three conservatives in the group of 95. I don’t think that a study about liberals would be very effective if done on a tiny group in the middle of rural North Carolina. </p>
<p>ANY reasonable study should be:
*Double-blind - so those doing the measuring don’t know what’s going on
*Large enough (of conservatives & liberals - maybe those researchers will have to go into the big, bad world of… Montana! South Dakota!) to be statistically meaningful. 90 liberals is fine; but that leaves 5 conservatives, which isn’t a sample size
*Not draw overly broad conclusions. This study does NOT tell us that early childhood traits manifest themselves in political leanings later in life; it only tells us that a bunch of researchers, who studied kids with the express purpose of finding personality differences among kids with different political leanings, found that a small number of proto-conservatives were considered negatively by others in their childhood, when they lived in a very liberal area.<br>
*Account for all variables. What about wealth? Having a stay-at-home parent? Definitions of “whiny,” “self-reliant,” and “confident.” Ask who is doing the measuring!</p>
<p>IMO, if social scientists were asked to set up an experiment to be approved by any scientist, they would all flunk. No clue on the part of any of those people how to set up a good experiment - double-blind, statistically significant, and correcting for variables. (Rolls eyes.) Then again, I’m convinced most of these people are doing what they are doing because they couldn’t handle the “rigidity” of math or the big, scary business world, where living by your theories has consequences. </p>
<p>Junk “science” that, IMO, is just as bad as “intelligent design” as a scientific model.</p>
<p>While I agree with most of the people on this board that the sample is not only too small, but done in the wrong place this paragraph in the article grabbed my attention. </p>
<p>“Whether anyone’s feelings are hurt or not, the work suggests that personality and emotions play a bigger role in our political leanings than we think. All of us, liberal or conservative, feel as though we’ve reached our political opinions by carefully weighing the evidence and exercising our best judgment. But it could be that all of that careful reasoning is just after-the-fact self-justification. What if personality forms our political outlook, with reason coming along behind, rationalizing after the fact?”</p>
<p>Excellent analysis, Aries. There are so many holes in this study that it’s ridiculous to consider that it has any validity. There is such a thing as social science research, but it typically has constraints regarding methodology and subjects that this bizarre study seems to disregard. What would anyone expect from looking at children in Berkeley? fwiw, this is not anything like the kids I’ve worked with in Minnesota – most of my friends were conservative and most had well-behaved, non-whiny children. Anecdotal, but true.</p>
<p>i find the study amusing and anecdotely in line with people i know. Many conservatives I know have a very narrow view of the world, very black and white, very my way or the highway mentallity. </p>
<p>That being said, wonder how those people that are so fearful of gays adopting kids feel, when there is little anecdotel evidence that having gay parents “warps” a kid in anyway, but they still stand by that hypothesis with all the respected research disagreeing with them</p>
<p>I say this because I am sure with the vehement reaction here. Sure Berkeley is a special place, but we could go the other direction. </p>
<p>I have a feeling that if a similar study was done in very conservative areas, one might find kids that grow up in a very particular, narrow way.</p>
<p>Sorry, but true</p>
<p>When my D did a summer program with kids from all over the country, kids from EXTREMELY conservative areas and backgrounds, she found they were AMAZED how different things were from what they had been around. Gee, liberals are not the enemy. Who would have thunk it. At least we evil liberal people accept conservatives as being part of the world, while conservatives have a viceral disdain for us liberals</p>
<p>And the reaction to this study is pretty funny, actually</p>
<p>Do you people defend the programs that Bush is putting millions into that very good studies show do not work? Real science, real stats, prove they are not working, yet, because of feelings, they are funded.</p>
<p>Me, my feeling is that part of what this study shows has some accuracy. But, sure its faulted, i agree.</p>
<p>and to call Berkekely a rathole is just not right. it is a city filled with families, working class, students, elderly, poor, rich, etc.</p>
<p>I would never call your city a rathole.</p>
<p>That shows something it self.</p>
<p>Would I call Houston a rathole? </p>
<p>But hey, call names once again. Remember, people are not rats. And Berkely is full of people. And by the way, we Californians pay for alot of stuff in those conservative states.</p>
<p>
Of course you do! I think it’s human nature to ascribe positive qualities to those who think like us, and negative qualities to those who don’t. Would you say that you have close friends of the conservative persuasion? If not, how can you judge how they look at the world? I have had friends on both sides of the political fence, and I find positive qualities on each side. My friends tend to share an outlook on raising children, regardless of how they vote, and are dedicated to pursuing social justice wherever they can, typically through volunteering. I think that the media tends to polarize us more than we would otherwise be.</p>
<p>I’ll just bring up one more point, one that I suggested to another poster on a different thread. Instead of making gross generalizations about how conservative people think, why not try talking to one sometime? You might be surprised.</p>
<p>I’m glad the professors at Berkeley can spend time doing studies like this instead of teaching undergrads…</p>
<p>or maybe they should be kept far away from undergrads if this is the research they put out.</p>
<p>And how about not judging all “liberals”</p>
<p>I find liberals are much more attacked on CC then conservatives ever are</p>
<p>
And I find the opposite. And I don’t believe that my post above, or in any of my posts, judged liberals in any way.</p>
<p>I must say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that conservatives and all things attendant to conservative ideas, seem to be routinely maligned on cc…</p>
<p>I have known inidividuals who call themselves “liberal” to be as judgemental as any bible-thumping conservative ever could be… And I have known “conservative” that have made me very, very sad in their narrow-minded views of the world.</p>
<p>But conservatives to NOT have a lock on this problem…</p>
<p>I thought the article was amusing and certainly applies to a lot of people I know. Lighten up everyone.</p>