Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid, reactionary, violent, liberal, or convert to Islam.
Mar. 19, 2006.
KURT KLEINER
Remember the whiny, insecure and not very bright 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 Raving Moonbat Leftist, or new convert to Islam. 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, intelligent and self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be conservatives.
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 Left. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on Leftists & Muslim 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 insecure kids tended to grow up liberal, and turned into rigid young adults who identified closely to homosexual roles and were uncomfortable with hetrosexual people.
The intelligent and confident kids turned out conservative 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 intellectual.
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 Leftist politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find conservative politics more congenial.
In a society that values self-confidence and out-goingness, it's a mostly flattering picture for conservatives. It also runs true 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 liberalism, 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 the Left in the political spectrum. Critics branded it the "liberals" are crazy" study and accused the authors of a political bias.
I couldn't resist a few changes in the original!
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