Dems and Reps at age 3?

I was rather astounded by this research.The article is on page two of this link I recommend reading the whole thing.

http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/04/predicting_politics.php

That's a good question.I don't know if the researchers included such considerations or not.The thing is, though, three year olds don't really get the whole idea of tradition, I don't think.Remember, the general finding was as it is stated in the OP. There are of course going to be factors that modify individual's views between 3 and 23, but the interesting thing is that the correlation is there, despite all the factors that could be modified in 20 years.

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i think people figure out pretty early whether they care about other people or not.

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It has a lot to do with being self-centered.Insecurity leads to selfishness.

So what are you saying? That the correlation doesn't actually exist? The results are invalid?Angla, all scientific studies simplify the questions they ask. No scientific study considers every single possible variable that may affect the outcome. If they tried to do this, we would never learn anything about anything.All scientific studies are imperfect, incomplete snapshots of a specific phenomenon (or several phenomena). It is through the accumulation of numerous studies over time that point to the same outcome that a consensus agreement about the explanation for that phenomena is reached.

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but I still have difficulty with the idea of jamming everyone into two absolute categories.

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That's why, as I quoted in my last post, at least one of their methods to determine their subject's political leanings was a scale, not an either-or measure.The study's political categories accurately reflect the social, economic, and moral differences between the major groups as they existed in the late 1980's. They are largely true today, as well.If you want to look at individual case studies so that all the subtle nuances of each person's worldview will be independently considered, that's fine, but you can't do science that way.

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1. It acts as a propaganda instrument against independent and third-party movements by implying one must either be a conservative/republican or liberal/democrat or be in some mushy middle.

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No, it doesn't.It is a scientific study. If the results are used that way by others, it is in no way an invalidation of the results any more than if people use results of gender difference studies to justify sexism.

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2. By being from 1989, it does not take into account any clusters of political beliefs that may have developed since that time, which somewhat limits it's applicability to the current situation.

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So? Studies of any magnitude and extending over decades will always lag behind current conditions. Does that mean the results are invalid?

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3. It may hurt the cause of the Democratic Party in the next election by turning off fiscal conservatives and quasi-libertarians through implying they have negative behavioral characteristics.

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So what, we should bury the results because you don't like the political ramifications?Jesus!I can't believe I'm reading this.

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To conclude, I am not mainly saying the study is 'right' or 'wrong,' I'm just saying it could have been better designed.

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I think, angla, that your political agenda is getting in the way of your scientific thinking.

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I'm not an especialist in this area, so I can't put my finger on it. But my nose tells me there is something fishy about it. Just from personal experience. I used to be quite asocial when I was a kid, and still turned out to become quite liberal by most standards...

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Er, anecdotal evidence is meaningless, you know.And the study doesn't claim a perfect correlation.

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I don't see conservatives as not caring about other people, or selfish.

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I do.

Maybe you have to live in the United States to have the view that conservatives, in general, don't care about other people and are selfish.That is certainly (one of) the overriding attitudes of conservatives here.

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The research findings indicate that at some stage in their developement, insecure children turned toward an authoritarian source/view.

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What the research did not do is rule out any other factors in the choices made. It is not difficult to make the leap from insecurity to a comfort zone, but I don't know why the comfort zone would always be the same 'conservative' politics.

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Well, these sorts of questions will lead to more research, and that's good.The study never claims that ONLY insecurity, et al leads to certain political political leanings.

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Once before you mentioned that people tend to prefer landscapes that depict scenes close to food and water supplies. I never asked you the particulars of that study, but it struck me at the time as very fishy too. How is it possible to say the 'food and water' aspect was more important than maybe the art or photography of the scenes, the color schemes (warm or cool, comforting colors, etc.) or the area where the study participants called home?

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You can control for these things.Believe it or not, scientists are trained in experimental design, you know.

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We recently saw a study where a link was made between young children and a preference for attractive faces. I am not sure how much worse we could get in terms of bias, or how much more such a study could depend on the time or decade in which it was done. What is or is not attractive changes very often!

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Not true with faces.What humans consider attractive in faces seems to be fairly hard wired and is strongly linked to symmetry.

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I do understand that these types of studies are starting points. It is the way they are marketed that gets to me.

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Marketed? Do you mean how they are reported by the media, or how they are disseminated and discussed among professionals in the field?

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If for example the 'attractiveness' study would have been presented as 'What Type of Faces Are Children Attracted To?' and the results analyzed, I would have no issue compared to a news line which reads 'Children Prefer Attractive Faces'.

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Like I said... what humans consider attractive (symmetrical) in faces is universal, with only small variations.But anyway, blame the media that reports the science. Scientists have very little control over how their work gets reported, misreported, etc.

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What this study is saying (sort of) is that none of these children changed or moved past their insecurities.

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No that's not at all what I get from the study.

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You know as well as I that this does not reflect reality.

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Well, no, I actually don't know that this finding doesn't reflect reality, even leaving aside your rather strawman versiopn of the findings.That's what the scientific method does; it lets us look at reality free from the biased, anecdotal thinking of "you and I know that X is/isn't true".

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Virtually everyone is able to make money, other than the severely disabled.

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Now they are better able to, since these days the government regulates minimum wages.The government also has made possible safe and humane work conditions, non-discrimination in hiring, overtime pay, minimum age requirements, educational and job-training grants, etc.Before the government instituted all of these things, the life of the average American worker was awful. They were little more than indentured slaves to the company with no hope of "getting ahead".Let us also remember that pollution of the air and water was very bad before environmental protection laws were passed, and food and drug quality and safety regulations keep tainted and harmful foods and drugs from damaging people. People can't pretend to be doctors and lawyers and pharmacists and police officers, but have to be licensed by the state.The reason we instituted these protections in the first place is because many, many people who want to make money have no problem doing so regardless of the damage they do to others or the Earth we all live on.The simple truth is that we have learned that you cannot trust business to do the right thing for the community if it is the choice between the community and making money.Here is some proof:Pittsburgh, PA late 19th century, pre regulation: Streetlights were on 24 hours a day becasue it was so dark. There were lots of public showers since people got filthy just from walking around town. It was called "Hell with the lid off".Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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If a few people can tell you in anecdote that their insecurities are past history and they are now liberal free-thinkers, it would be obvious that the study doesn't reflect ALL of reality.

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No scientific study, including this one, claims to reflect ALL reality. So that's a strawman, unless you can show me where in any of my posts, or in the study, or in the articles about the study, anybody claimed that it reflected ALL reality. Sheesh.

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Conversely 'reality' tells you that attempting to put people into little neat packages is only interesting and not realistic.

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*sigh*All scientific studies limit variables. All scientific studies limit what they look at. No scientific study can look at each individual person's infinite individual nuances and come up with anything meaningful. If we didn't simplify things we would never learn anything about anything. One scientific study is only part of the picture and other studies need to be included to form a more complete picture.Look, the results are what they are, and they are valid results.You all who are objecting just need to deal with that.What is it about Psychology research that makes laypeople so easily brush it's findings aside, or assume the scientists researching an issue are complete morons who haven't already figured out the issues they believe are so damning to the study?

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Nothing makes any of us doubt the scientists or their methods or their integrity or their genius. I am questioning their findings.

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But it is exactly their methods that you are questioning. Often, you doubt the results because you think they have failed to control for some incredibly obvious variable that you thought of but doubt that the researchers have.Isn't your argument basically:"Maybe they got these results (that sound fishy to me) because they didn't they take this and/or that variable into account."?Isn't your argument also that you doubt the Psychology findings in a single paper because they don't explain ALL reality, even though no scientific study claims to do this? Why does psychology research make people think like this?

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Opening a topic about the study does, however, make us believe you would like to discuss the results, rather than just post them.

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We haven't been discussing the results, actually.What people have mostly been doing is unreasonably criticizing the study on grounds that range from the fact that it doesn't explain all reality to the belief that it is a propaganda tool and will damage the Democratic party's chances in the next election.Or, my favorite criticism, the vague "Something smells fishy about this study, followed by an open-ended statement questioning the study's methodology but no actual analysis of the research to show that the doubt is fair".

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Yes, of course you are right. Conservatives are Satan-spawned and should be taken out and slaughtered. It's a good thing that we have the divine liberals, incapable of making any mistake or doing any wrong to save us.

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How on earth is this a reply to anything in my post?You made a claim that unless a person is disabled, they can make money.I put that statement into a historical context that shows how, contrary to the (your?) idea that government intervention is nearly always bad for society, government intervention in the form of worker, consumer, and environmental protections have, for the most part, been very good for society.If you disagree, then present evidence to the contrary instead of putting words I never said into my mouth.Do you deny that history has shown that in general we can't trust business to do the right thing in a community if it is between the best interests of all in the community and the best interests of the business?