At least that’s the conclusion reached by psychologists and social scientists and reported on today in the Washington Post.
The field of social psychology has long been focused on how social environments affect the way people behave. But social psychologists are people, too, and as the United States has become increasingly politically polarized, they have grown increasingly interested in examining what drives these sharp divides: red states vs. blue states; pro-Iraq war vs. anti-Iraq war; pro-same-sex marriage vs. anti-same-sex marriage. And they have begun to study political behavior using such specialized tools as sophisticated psychological tests and brain scans.
This is where psychologists and social scientists lose me. Rather than just accept the idea that people have different ideas about politics, they have to waste research money coming up with an explanation for it. Typically, they do these things in an effort to reinforce their own political biases and explain things they just can’t understand as they sit in their ivory towers. They simply cant’ contemplate how anyone can disagree with them, so they come up with an explanation that makes them feel good.
And boy did they come up with a good one this time.
Studies presented at the conference, for example, produced evidence that emotions and implicit assumptions often influence why people choose their political affiliations, and that partisans stubbornly discount any information that challenges their preexisting beliefs.
Well, duh. That’s what a partisan is all about.
But wait, it gets better:
Another study presented at the conference, which was in Palm Springs, Calif., explored relationships between racial bias and political affiliation by analyzing self-reported beliefs, voting patterns and the results of psychological tests that measure implicit attitudes — subtle stereotypes people hold about various groups.
That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did.
So there you have it. Conservatives, libertarians, and other opponents of the left aren’t honest people with opinions that must be dealt with and answered. They are racists, sometimes even not admitting it to themselves.
But let’s look at some of the details of this “study.”
For their study, Nosek, Banaji and social psychologist Erik Thompson culled self-acknowledged views about blacks from nearly 130,000 whites, who volunteered online to participate in a widely used test of racial bias that measures the speed of people’s associations between black or white faces and positive or negative words. The researchers examined correlations between explicit and implicit attitudes and voting behavior in all 435 congressional districts.
The analysis found that substantial majorities of Americans, liberals and conservatives, found it more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts than white faces — evidence of implicit bias. But districts that registered higher levels of bias systematically produced more votes for Bush.
First of all, I don’t get this idea of assuming racism just because of a person’s reaction to a picture. Maybe they had a negative reaction because the person in the picture looked threatening, or maybe the picture reminded them of a negative experience, or maybe they just didn’t find the picture attractive. Second, even if you accept these results as indicative of anything, they show that both liberals and conservatives “found it more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts”, whatever that means. Given that, how can you make a conclusion about a person on the right when their attitude seems to be shared with a majority of people on the left ? You can’t.
And here’s what one of the creators of the study had to say about their conclusions:
“Obviously, such research does not speak at all to the question of the prejudice level of the president,” said Banaji, “but it does show that George W. Bush is appealing as a leader to those Americans who harbor greater anti-black prejudice.”
Apparently, one can say the same thing about John Kerry.
The sad thing about all of this is that these naval-gazing academics probably got government grant money to conduct these studies.
Michelle Malkin has more on what is looking alot like politically motivated science.
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