{"id":10712,"date":"2012-04-21T09:18:46","date_gmt":"2012-04-21T14:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=10712"},"modified":"2012-04-21T09:26:43","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T14:26:43","slug":"the-republican-brain-on-the-republican-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2012\/04\/21\/the-republican-brain-on-the-republican-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Republican Brain on the Republican Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the article, The Republican Brain on the Republican Brain<\/strong><\/a>, author Chris Mooney discusses the reaction to his book The Republican Brain<\/em>.\u00a0 The following quote gives you a hint as to the material in the book:<\/p>\n

… I further argue, you realize that there are some psychological traits that tend to accompany conservatism – especially in its current form in the United States – that naturally conflict with the nuanced, uncertainty-laden thinking style of scientists and liberals alike (members of the “reality based community”). These traits include authoritarianism<\/a> – seeing the world in black and white, intolerant of uncertainty – but also a lack of openness to experience <\/a>(a personality trait), a higher need for closure<\/a> and so on.
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\nIn fact, all the researchers I interviewed for the book stressed that conservative psychology is perfectly normal and has many advantages to it (although also, of course, some disadvantages). The conservative critics either seemed not to have actually read the research in question, or were, for some other reason, unable to take such a nuanced view of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the end of the article, the author describes an experiment which was intended to measure the extent to which the book’s thesis could be proven scientifically.\u00a0 One surprising outcome for the researchers is described as:<\/p>\n

The conservatives in the study were spending a lot less time reading our essays than liberals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The author advises caution in interpreting these results until it is replicated by other experiments. I see another reason to be cautious about jumping to conclusions as to what this observation proves.\u00a0 Perhaps conservatives are faster readers than liberals.\u00a0 Maybe they are all graduates of Evelyn Woods’ Speed Reading classes.\u00a0 (Of course they could be faster readers because they skip over nuance in what they are reading.\u00a0 This is one of the main ideas of the book.\u00a0 The psychologists need to devise an experiment where they see which explanation is more likely to be the main one.)<\/p>\n

You can contribute to this ongoing research by adding your comments about your reaction to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the article, The Republican Brain on the Republican Brain, author Chris Mooney discusses the reaction to his book The Republican Brain.\u00a0 The following quote gives you a hint as to the material in the book: … I further argue, you realize that there are some psychological traits that tend to accompany conservatism – especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10712"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10717,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10712\/revisions\/10717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}