Inductivist

I learned as an undergraduate in social psychology that "prejudice" refers to judging people before knowing the facts. I was told that it was bad to do that. Now young people are taught that it's bad to judge AFTER getting the facts; for example, making a judgment about a group after looking at data presented at this blog. I guess we need a new word for this transgression. "Postjudice" seems a bit awkward.

I was curious if college liberalizes students. Common sense tells me it does, but I have seen research that throws doubt on the idea.

Listed below are the mean conservatism scores by year of college for those attending college since 2000 (General Social Survey data).

Mean conservatism

Freshmen  4.04
Sophomores  3.71

Juniors  3.62
Seniors  3.69

Students tend to get more liberal as they move through college. The shift from the freshman to junior year is almost half a standard deviation, which means it is a fairly big change.  So it does look like academics are somewhat successful at their goal of turning our youth into progressives. They seem to have the most luck in the first three years--the seniors are no more liberal than juniors.

Three incidents struck me this week. On Tuesday I thought, "My students are always telling me about all the psychotropic medications they are on. Sociology majors are a screwed up bunch."  Then today, a student who over the past few weeks confessed a long list of mental health problems claimed that today's Republicans are mentally ill. Another student followed her by saying you can find a "Republican Disorder" in the DSM-V.  Finally, I watched a video clip of protesters at Trump's canceled rally in Chicago today, and it occurred to me that lefties like my students often look like they have psychological issues, or at least use drugs. Maybe it's just my undergraduate education from 20 years ago. I was taught that a dirty and disheveled look is a predictor of mental deterioration.

So, as usual, I turn to the General Social Survey. Participants were asked how many days in the past month were poor mental health days for them. Here are the percentages that reported at least one bad day by political orientation:

Percent with at least one day of bad mental health in past month

Extremely liberal  52.4
Liberal  47.3
Slightly liberal  47.6
Moderate  44.7
Slightly conservative  43.7
Conservative  38.3
Extremely conservative  30.4

Craziness increases with degree of liberalism.  If we look at mean days instead, extreme liberals average 5.88 days per month. For extreme conservatives, it's only 2.44--less than half the liberal number.

I was curious if atheists might have moved right politically in the past decade. Here are the percentages of atheists who voted for the Democratic presidential candidate minus the percent of the general population who did (GSS data):

Eighties +16.8 (n = 56)
Nineties +20.7 (n = 121)
Last decade +12.3 (n = 191)

Atheists are still more liberal than the overall population, but perhaps a little less so nowadays. On the other hand, I suspect they have gotten more liberal on social issues. Here is the percent who think a women should be able to get an abortion for any reason minus the percent for the total population:

Nineties +34.1 (n = 96)
Last decade +36.0 (n = 103)
This decade +44.7 (n = 41)

Atheists are more socially liberal than generally liberal, and this appears to be on the increase. They have reached the Jewish level of lifestyle liberalism.

This graph shows the percent of U.S. households that have at least one firearm (GSS data). From 1973 to 2010, the figure has dropped from 48 to 32 percent. Over the period, ownership has fallen by one-third. This is another indicator of the country's move in a liberal direction.

Is is just me, or does the MLK National Memorial statue--a symbol of modern-day liberalism--have an Oriental despot kind of feel to it?

Liberals disgust me. The bodies weren't even cold in Tucson before they exploited the opportunity to put the blame on conservatives. Early signs point to the shooter being schizophrenic, but that didn't give the media pause. The talk shows this morning were obsessed with "tone" and "violent rhetoric." The spectacle yesterday of the Pima County sheriff refusing to answer question after question (he didn't know anything), and then giving a big speech about how all the bigotry must stop (he knows everything) was truly disgusting. Shameless, shameless people, these liberals.

If we want to turn this tragedy into a political discussion, let's focus on the naivete of liberalism. Congresswoman Giffords was repeatedly threatened, her office was shot up, and after the attack the sheriff said she could have had security at any time if she wanted it. But the dangerous liberal ideology that people are inherently good led the Congresswoman to continue to have meet-and-greets with absolutely no protection. Tragic misjudgment caused by an unrealistic ideology. I looked in vain on the talk shows today for discussions of liberal naivete.     

Liberals are a real treat. They sneer at anyone so foolish to believe that media (e.g., Hollywood) causes violence, only to turn around to make the exact same argument when the topic is political violence. What a treat. 

In this paper, Michael Woodley critiques Bruce Charlton's hypothesis that "clever-sillies" use their high IQs and openness to experience to construct social and political views that are farther from the truth than views generated be common sense and social intelligence. According to Woodley: 1) smart people are not necessarily less socially intelligent; 2) smart people might tend to be politically correct only in cultures where liberalism is the dominant view; 3) high-IQ individuals who score high on conscientiousness (and conformity) will adopt PC views in a liberal environment and conservative views in a conservative environment; 4) traditional cultures value dominance, while the modern West values counter-dominance (or egalitarianism); and 5) adopting politically correct views is a way to signal to others that you are altruistic and support egalitarianism, which is then rewarded with enhanced social status and greater access to resources.

Woodley draws on Inglehart's work that has found that, as Western societies have become wealthy, a focus on material concerns (e.g., wealth, security) gives way to an emphasis on post-materialist values, which include self-expression, autonomy, and equality. Social status come less from wealth and more from "higher" pursuits like altruism. This is an evolutionarily novel state of affairs. While men have traditionally been admired for dominant behaviors, now they are rewarded for self-effacement. Believing, for example, in a natural hierarchy among men might have at one time been seen as the mark of a dominant and thus admired man. Now it seems arrogant and ungenerous, and is consequently penalized. High-IQ folks understand this more clearly than others and thus adopt politically correct views.       

I looked at over 5,000 respondents from the GSS to estimate a model that predict the odds of having at least one child. Here are the results (logistic regression coefficients):


Having at least one child

Age .05 
IQ -.05
Years of education -.15
Income .00
Belief in God .15
Political conservatism .08

All of the relationships are statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence level (two-tailed test). The estimates depend on the scale of the predictor: the income coefficient is so small, for example, because income varies so widely. Income is actually a comparatively strong predictor of not being childless, as is age (not surprisingly). Education is also a strong predictor of having no kids. IQ is weaker. Belief in God is a strong predictor the other way, while conservatism is a weaker predictor.

Long story short: being an educated liberal atheist is like having a disease where your testicles rot and fall off.  

And you develop this mysterious desire to get a dog or a cat.

I'm fed up. For awhile there I thought that liberals had a point that it was unfair of people like Glenn Beck or even Newt Gingrich to call Obama and his buddies socialists, revolutionaries, etc. Whatever Obama's personal views, he has operated like a liberal. For someone like me who has spent his whole career surrounded by Lefties, Obama has seemed pretty conventional.  

But after being reminded by recent events how liberals find ANY opportunity to brand conservatives as people who secretly want to string up blacks, liberals deserve ANYTHING and EVERYTHING they get. Using a word like racist puts Tea Partiers and Himmler into the same circle. Calling someone a racist is just as harsh as calling him a child molester or a street thug. In fact, being called a thug is not as bad because it is associated with a certain glamor. How many glamorous racists do you know?  Heck, even pedophilia has glamor--look at Hollywood's treatment of Roman Polanski.    

Liberals may be morons about many things, but they understand politics. It's not a gentleman's debate; it's a gotdamn street fight. If I can get votes by accusing you of sleeping with your mother, I'll do it--so says the liberal. If I can hear imaginary voices calling me the n-word as I head to the Capitol building, I'll accuse you of it. Just listen to Shirley Sherrod. According to this angelic media martyr, racism is worse now than in the past. That means that, despite appearances, more of us white folks are now itching to lynch somebody than in 1950.   

I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep if liberals are sometimes called communists or fascists or totalitarians or potheads or degenerates or mentally ill or subversives or traitors or cowards or civilization destroyers. In fact, I'll join in if the accusation seems to have traction because a punch in the nose deserves a punch in the eye.  

Conservative immigration enthusiasts point to the supposed social conservatism of immigrants. Using varous sources of data, I have shown that Hispanics are the weakest kind of social conservatives. They vote two-to-one for pro-abortion candidates all the time, and according to Pew data, they are more in favor of gay marriage than whites and blacks. 

This kind of analysis typically focuses on Hispanics since they are the largest group of immigrants, but what about the most elite groups? They enjoy power of another sort. Here are the percentages of people who want abortion to be legal for any reason for the five immigration groups with the most prestigious jobs (according to the GSS):   

Percent of immigrants in favor of abortion for any reason

1. Indian 51.4
2. Chinese 49.3
3. Russian (non-Jewish) 78.6
4. Jewish 69.1
5. English 64.7

Forty percent of native-born American favor abortion for any reason. All of the elite immigrant groups are significantly more pro-abortion. The fact is that immigrants are liberalizing the country, not making it more traditional.

Academics disgust me. This week was the second time that I witnessed what looks very much like anti-military discrimination. We were doing telephone interviews for a replacement position, and one candidate seemed particularly strong. Great vita. Ivy League. Post-doc at an impressive place. Good publications. Math whiz. Then I heard the man speak. I literally thought to myself, "This guy sounds like Steven Pinker." Beautiful answers.

When we hung up the phone, a committee member beat me to the punch and started rattling off all the reasons why we didn't want the guy. They were all bogus. I'm a little slow on the uptake, but then it hit me that she didn't want him because he is ex-military. Of course she is not going to admit that. Either she outright dislikes the military, or she sees it as a sign that the candidate probably does not have a lifetime subscription to The Nation like she does. I proceeded to debate her but then the others jumped in and took her side. And veterans are supposed to get a break--what a joke.

I consoled myself that he's too good for us anyway and will do very well somewhere. Who knows, maybe he'll be out with his own Blank Slate in a few years, and I'm damn happy it won't have our university's name on it.   

Liberals

All races, N =2,260



Whites, N = 1,790

I've been around professors for many years. Many of them have filthy offices and seem to take pride in their slovenly ways. They are horrified at the thought of having neatly combed hair. (Liberal) popular culture picked up on this a long time ago and continues to celebrate personal disorderliness. (According to research, a disregard for personal hygiene is a sign of mental disorder).

General Social Survey interviewers ask their questions in people's homes. In 2000, they also recorded how clean the respondent's place was. The top graphs summarizes cleanliness by political views. Conservatives keep a tightier house.

In case you suspect that this is due to the messiness of the homes of poor minorities, look at the bottom graph for whites only. The pattern remains.

Thirty percent of really liberal people have a history of mental illness: The 4th makes me think of politics, and politics makes me think of liberals, and it occurs to me that I haven't taken a jab at them in months. Using General Social Survey data, I did a cross-tabulation of political orientation and a history of mental illness. Here are the results:


Percent having had a mental illness

Extremely liberal 30.0
Liberal 11.5
Slightly liberal 12.1
Moderate 4.7
Slightly conservative 7.8
Conservative 5.6
Extremely conservative 5.1

Hmmm. I seem to vaguely recall a whole body of scholarship claiming that conservatism is a symptom of mental illness. It looks like the "liberalism is a mental disorder" rants by Michael Savage are closer to the truth.

Liberal scholars neglected the obvious way to see if there was a connection between political orientation and mental problems: ask people their political orientation and ask them if they have had a mental problem.

One possible link is being neurotic: I can see the Woody Allen type on the couch, riddled with a long list of insecurities, anxieties, and feelings of guilt. Government serves as Dominatrix, pleasing masochistic tendencies through high taxation, affirmative action, and the like. Maybe mentally ill people just want their SSI checks increased. Whatever the case, psychiatric disorders are common among really liberal people.

But let me anticipate comments by liberals passing through: only liberals are sufficiently self-aware to admit they are sick.