Interesting study--How to spot a baby conservative

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Posted by Minstrel BoyAdded to homepage Mon Mar 20th

2006, 08:01 AM ET

 

How to spot a baby conservative

Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up

rigid and traditional. Future liberals, on the other

hand ...

 

Mar. 19, 2006

KURT KLEINERSPECIAL TO THE Toronto STAR (3/19/2006)

 

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school,

the one who always thought everyone was out to get

him, and was always running to the teacher with

complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a

conservative. At least, he did if he was one of 95

kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists

have been tracking for the last 20 years. The

confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up

to be liberals.

 

The study from the Journal of Research Into

Personality isn't going to make the UC Berkeley

professor who published it any friends on the right.

Similar conclusions a few years ago from another

academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and

even led to a Congressional investigation into his

research funding.

 

But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s

Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne

Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100

nursery school kids as part of a general study of

personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the

time by teachers and assistants who had known them for

months. There's no reason to think political bias

skewed the ratings — the investigators were not

looking at political orientation back then. Even if

they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds

would have had much idea about their political

leanings.

 

A few decades later, Block followed up with more

surveys, looking again at personality, and this time

at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up

conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who

hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were

uncomfortable with ambiguity.

 

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