No I Am NOT Going to Directly Insult Conservatives . . .

But instead I will quantify them. Not really me, but this paper I found on the net seems to describe the beast coldly, dispassionately, and puts them in the proper context. And the paper of which I speak is:


"Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,"

Now maybe I read the thing too quickly, but I sorta got the idea that pehaps conservativism really is not a political idea or ideology at all, but is merely a (cluster) of personality traits?

Now THAT may explain why conservativism has NO APPEAL at all to me:

I don't have the personality for it!

For example, consider this nugget:

"Intolerance of ambiguity constituted a general personality variable that related positively to prejudice as well as to more general social and cognitive variables. Individuals who are intolerant of ambiguity are significantly more often given to dichotomous conceptions of the sex roles, of the parent-child relationship, and of interpersonal relationships in general. They are less permissive and lean toward rigid categorization of cultural norms. Power–weakness, cleanliness– dirtiness, morality–immorality, conformance–divergence are the dimensions through which people are seen. . . . There is sensitivity against qualified as contrasted with unqualified statements and against perceptual ambiguity; a disinclination to think in terms of probability."

Anyway here is the link to a summary with analysis, and a the full paper.

paper

Yes, this is THAT paper, that cause some (GOP) pols to have a hissy fit, a couple two-three years back.