There is an interesting study which suggests that conservative views are to some extent based on fear - fear of change, fear of the unknown.

nsf.gov - News - Some Political Views May be Related to Physiology - US National Science Foundation (NSF)

I say this study didn't go far enough: the really useful data will come from letting creepy crawlies run over conservatives, not letting them merely see pictures of spiders etc.

That is a very politically 'loadad' report and I am suprised that any study with a sample of 46 people is really accurate to tell anything. Is there an assumption here that Republican or Conservative is more aggressive in takling the 'scary' problems that face us? or that peope vote for them because they are scared?

It would be interesting to see how that report was reported in the more mainstream 'tabloid' press that has a more open political bias.

With all the guess work and assumptions made in that report it could have equally came out that people with a high response to the stimulation have access to to a greater spectrum of tollerance and ability of dealing with stressfull situations. It is OK to feel bad when seeing a maggot infested wound and those with greater compassion and understanding for others and towards the victim also supports greater compassion and understanding for issues relating to guns... vote RIGHT and those who dont give a shit about other peoples pain and danger vote for parties that are left.

(my policical views are not represented here!)

southnick wrote:

There is an interesting study which suggests that conservative views are to some extent based on fear - fear of change, fear of the unknown.

This presupposes that "away-from motivation" is somehow "bad" and "toward motivation" is somehow "good". In other words, it's bullshit.

If there's something to be afraid of, being afraid is the smart thing to do.

Whether a member of the public is mostly relying on "towards" or "away-from" motivation, you can still link that to sloppy thinking and blatant non-truths. You can get people to be scared of abstract nouns or really look forward to abstract nouns! I really don't think the issue is with motivational style..

My favourite "towards" style political nonsense has to be statements like "We are all for more education" with no mention of what that means.. more teachers, better teachers, more materials, better curriculum, grants, etc..??

Redsimo wrote:

That is a very politically 'loadad' report and I am suprised that any study with a sample of 46 people is really accurate to tell anything.

Academics tend to lean so far to the left that they fall on their faces. That said, I think testing 46 people is good enough to notice a pattern. As you said below, though...

Is there an assumption here that Republican or Conservative is more aggressive in takling the 'scary' problems that face us? or that peope vote for them because they are scared?

...it isn't the data, but the way it's framed.

It would be interesting to see how that report was reported in the more mainstream 'tabloid' press that has a more open political bias.

Heh... Most of the mainstream media aren't as far left as academics, but they're still out there.

(my policical views are not represented here!)

I'll represent mine. According to the World's Smallest Political Quiz, I'm a centrist (almost exactly dead-center, but with a very slight movement toward Republican and toward Libertarian). I pretty much disagree with everybody!

When I first became curious about politics, I wondered about the labels. What is it, I thought, with which "Liberals" are so liberal and what "Conservatives" want to conserve? I never got a direct answer, but all of my reading and talking to people on both "sides" comes down to this: a Liberal looks around and says, "This world could be a much better place," and a Conservative looks around and says, "We've got some pretty damned good things going on already."

I think NLP lets us see from both perspectives and teaches us balance. Fix what's broken while keeping intact what isn't.

Too far to the left, we get Socialism; too far to the right, Fascism. We already know that neither of those works. I vote for balance. (I just can't vote in the primaries!)

adrian r wrote:

I say this study didn't go far enough: the really useful data will come from letting creepy crawlies run over conservatives, not letting them merely see pictures of spiders etc.

I guess you're afraid to test the Liberals?

The interesting thing about the study (now that I re-read the article) is that everybody responded to the images with "away-from" but the Conservatives' response was greater. To my "away-from" thinking, that means a Liberal is more likely to ignore a problem. That doesn't match my experience with real-world Liberal folk. So I don't really think the study has established what many think it has established.

mrlimbic wrote:

Whether a member of the public is mostly relying on "towards" or "away-from" motivation, you can still link that to sloppy thinking and blatant non-truths.

Agreed 100%.

You can get people to be scared of abstract nouns or really look forward to abstract nouns! I really don't think the issue is with motivational style..

I'm not sure where the concept of abstract nouns is coming from. Spiders and bloody faces are pretty real.

(I appreciate spiders, myself, mostly because I detest flies. And I tend to be motivated toward bloody faces, figuring they need assistance. I would have messed up that study.)

Michael_DeBusk wrote:

If there's something to be afraid of, being afraid is the smart thing to do.

so if there is something there, and in somebody's frame that something is something to be afraid of, but in somebody elses frame, that something is NOT something to be afraid of, then the second person is not smart for not sharing the same frame as the first person (or at least the part of the frame that sorts "to be afraid of/not be afraid of"?

or were you assuming there was only one person, and that person looks at something, and becasue that person feels afraid, they immediately categorize the thing as something to be afriad of, and then it is smart to be afraid of something that they already decided that they were afraid of? If that's the case, then boy howdy, I'm the smartest dude in the world, becasue let me tell you, I'm afraid of EVERYTHING that i'm afraid of, unless of course I somehow become not afraid of it, in which case it magically jumps into the category of things I'm not afraid of, which I suppose is another argument.

bamboohat wrote:

so if there is something there...

You sure did go out of your way to avoid asking a Meta-model question.

You bring up a fair point. I was assuming what American (and, I presume, British) law calls "a reasonable person." I find generalizations useful and think a good NLPer can spot one for what it is without making a big deal over it. Maybe I should restrict myself to E-Prime or something.

maybe I'm thick, but I still don't understand what you mean when you say being smart is related to being afraid.

I just re read the article and I really think you can only conclude that people who report being right wing are more jumpy when exposed to certain stimulithan people who report being left wing.

Anything that you can extrapolate from the that is sketchy at best, imo.

bamboohat wrote:

maybe I'm thick, but I still don't understand what you mean when you say being smart is related to being afraid.

That isn't what I said.

I just re read the article and I really think you can only conclude that people who report being right wing are more jumpy when exposed to certain stimulithan people who report being left wing.

That's what it said.

Anything that you can extrapolate from the that is sketchy at best, imo.

There's a joke from the Cold War era about a foot race between a Soviet and an American. The next day's headline in the US:

America Beats Soviet Union

And in the Soviet papers:

Soviets Take Second Place;

Americans Come In Next-to-Last