Friday, August 2, 2013

A key factor in liberal v. conservative views

See Robert Reich's 7/24/13 blog post. Therein he said:

"The difference has to do with the kind of personalities the two parties attract. People who respect authority, follow orders, want clear answers, obey commands, and prefer precise organization and control, tend to gravitate toward Republicans. On the other hand, people who don’t much like authority, recoil from orders, don’t believe in clear answers, often disobey commands, and prefer things a bit undefined, tend to gravitate to the Democrats.

"In Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Jonathan Weiler, professor of international studies at UNC Chapel Hill and his co-author, Marc Hetherington, use statistical models to determine whether someone is a Republican or Democrat. It turns out that the best predictor of party affiliation is someone’s score on an authoritarian personality scale that measures many of the traits I mentioned above."

We've seen research like this before, like here, here, and here, which show that there are a variety of factors involved, authoritanianism  being just one.

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