Whiny kids turn into conservatives, tough kids turn into liberals

[Grimmlok]

Mar. 19, 2006. 10:45 AM
KURT KLEINER
SPECIAL TO THE STAR


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.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative of the whole country. But within his sample, he says, the results hold. He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial.

In a society that values self-confidence and out-goingness, it's a mostly flattering picture for liberals. It also runs contrary to the American stereotype of wimpy liberals and strong conservatives.

Of course, if you're studying the psychology of politics, you shouldn't be surprised to get a political reaction. Similar work by John T. Jost of Stanford and colleagues in 2003 drew a political backlash. The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the psychology of conservatism, and concluded that people who are dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to conservatism. Critics branded it the "conservatives are crazy" study and accused the authors of a political bias.

Jost welcomed the new study, saying it lends support to his conclusions. But Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona who was critical of Jost's study, was less impressed.


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`I found (the Jack Block study) to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best'

Jeff Greenberg

University of Arizona

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"I found it to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best," he said of the Block study. He thinks insecure, defensive, rigid people can as easily gravitate to left-wing ideologies as right-wing ones. He suspects that in Communist China, those kinds of people would likely become fervid party members.

The results do raise some obvious questions. Are nursery school teachers in the conservative heartland cursed with classes filled with little proto-conservative whiners?

Or does an insecure little boy raised in Idaho or Alberta surrounded by conservatives turn instead to liberalism?

Or do the whiny kids grow up conservative along with the majority of their more confident peers, while only the kids with poor impulse control turn liberal?

Part of the answer is that personality is not the only factor that determines political leanings. For instance, there was a .27 correlation between being self-reliant in nursery school and being a liberal as an adult. Another way of saying it is that self-reliance predicts statistically about 7 per cent of the variance between kids who became liberal and those who became conservative. (If every self-reliant kid became a liberal and none became conservatives, it would predict 100 per cent of the variance). Seven per cent is fairly strong for social science, but it still leaves an awful lot of room for other influences, such as friends, family, education, personal experience and plain old intellect.

For conservatives whose feelings are still hurt, there is a more flattering way for them to look at the results. Even if they really did tend to be insecure complainers as kids, they might simply have recognized that the world is a scary, unfair place.

Their grown-up conclusion that the safest thing is to stick to tradition could well be the right one. As for their "rigidity," maybe that's just moral certainty.

The grown-up liberal men, on the other hand, with their introspection and recognition of complexity in the world, could be seen as self-indulgent and ineffectual.

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?

It could be that whom we vote for has less to do with our judgments about tax policy or free trade or health care, and more with the personalities we've been stuck with since we were kids.

Kurt Kleiner is a Toronto-based freelance science writer.

[PaintTheTownRed]

"the one who always thought everyone was out to get him" this is so funny because it so true, they think the evil liberals want to take away their money, their religion and their guns and that non white people want to harm them

[feliciakb]

Well, thank you for your flattering generalization Painthetown. You obviously know all of us very well.

Oh, and a social science study done at UC Berkely is sure to be unbiased. Very scientifically sound.

Speaking of my own fairly diverse group of friends, the ones that are most conservative also tend to be the most successful, independent and responsible. Of course, now *I'm* probably being biased, since people tend to gravitate to those that share their own interests and values.

Anyway, I consider myself fairly conservative and didn't dare whine and tattle as a child, lest I get the crap beat out of me by my hippy, drug-addicted father. That is until I moved out at the age of 14 and had to start supporting myself. So yeah, I guess I'd call myself a pretty independent kid as well.

Btw, I'm NOT religious (though I AM tolerant of those that are), I don't own a gun (but I support the 2nd amendment), and I have NO tolerance for racism. But you're damn right I don't appreciate handing over nearly half of my hard-earned income to govt!

[Grimmlok]

Well till it benefits you with services that you need *snorts*

[feliciakb]

Originally Posted by Grimmlok

Well till it benefits you with services that you need *snorts*

I assure you that there are many services I will never need and don't mind paying for the ones that I do. Actually, I don't mind paying taxes, just wish we had a more fair system, such as a flat tax. And I'm equally critical of republican spending (especially the current administration) as I am democratic spending.

[buttmunch]

Well, it looks like my kids will be died-in-the wool liberals. Hurrah!

[Grimmlok]

Please raise a generation of liberals who fight like pit-bulls for equal rights and a religion-free government. Teach them to hold fast in what they believe, teach them tolerance and understanding, and teach them not to be cowards because neocons are first and foremost scared of everything outside their comfort zone.

[IceQueen]

Oh good - at least my future kids will grow up conservative. I'd rather have whiny kids than whining adults.

By the way, Berkeley? It just couldn't possibly be the influence of parents/friends/schools now could it? Let's see them do the study some where else.

[Grimmlok]

Whiny kids turn into petulant, cowardly adults with an undeserved air of entitlement.

ie: neocons.

[PaintTheTownRed]

I think these studies are just for fun, a few days ago there was a study that conservatives were happier than liberals. The reality is in America there really aren't any Conservatives or Liberals, maybe a few, but the vast majority are left leaning moderates. There was a REAL study done last year that had people pick their label of choice:conservative, liberal, libertarian, independent, power ranger, etc..than were asked a series of questions on their positions on each and every issue. The results? We are more alike than not.
The whole conservative/liberal thing is nothing more than a scam perpetuated by hate radio and TV entertainers and Republicans. Anyone who doesn't follow lockstep with their positions is labeled a liberal. The current "conservative" movement in the US bares no resemblance to the original movement at all and most Americans are just waiting for this conservative/liberal nonesense to end.

[Grimmlok]

neocons are happier than liberals because they don't have to think, and exist inside a little sheltered bubble where the daily intellectual struggles never manage to intrude. They have their little rules and a preconceived notion on how things should be and just don't think outside of that.

It's easy to be happy when you constantly block out anything that might poke a hole in your Pleasantville life.