-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 On 02/03/2014 10:33 PM, Bruce Metcalf wrote: > I think what both cases demonstrate is the inclusive/exclusive > divide in how people approach most anything. Some are interested > in "purity" by some standard, others in effectiveness. Indeed I > see the US Congress caught in this dichotomy at present as well. > > It's easy for those of us on the liberal end of these debates to > assign each side to opposite sides of average intelligence. Easy, > but not accurate.
It's interesting that Bruce brings up purity in the context of political/social conservatism, since that's often one of the more prevalent of the five 'moral foundations' identified by Jonathan Haidt's research [1], along with Fairness, Harm, Ingroup Identification,and Authority. Now, as for intellectual differences: I wouldn't argue over different cognitive abilities, but instead differential cognitive styles. My research looks at authoritarianism --what grew out of the Berkeley F-scale and the Second World War (on the off chance anyone actually cares about my research). Authoritarianism is composed of three subcomponents: submission to authority, aggression against those who violate social norms, and traditional/conservative world views; importantly, these three sub-factors are largely independent: thus you can be high on one without forcing the other two to be high as well. > I think it's more a matter of whether an individual needs > certainty or truth. The choice of one or the other seems obvious to > members of both sides, which is why conversation is unproductive. As it turns out, combined with Haidt's work, evidence suggests that depending how you fall on these authoritarian measures (low to high continuum) affects the situations that you will engage in cognitive heuristics, and I believe that it also relates to what kinds of heuristics you tend to use. Similarly, Haidt's work found that depending on where you sit on the political spectrum (Strongly liberal to Strongly conservative [7 pt Likert item]) affects where you place those five foundations in relation to your decision making, political/ideological priorities, & how high a cost you would endure before violating each of the five. That last bit I would argue deals with Bruce's comment on truth vs certainty, although I disagree on the meaning of the difference. Instead, I would postulate that it falls under a need for complexity (or lack thereof for conservatives) which again brings up to a tendency to engage in cognitive heuristics (rules of thumb) vs declarative/computationally expensive cognition. landon (sorry, nascent academic whose code has been compiling) [1] Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2008. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) - -- Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJS8GaQAAoJEDeph/0fVJWsi8oP/1JW+KGhNMzhiV5VENs6JzVK eGquqtGKdaFiIFSKq3X163nhnFVzu8gTLr+C3nVNXQFRhny+6ySjcY1fSdyge84y BRTwEMbPFxMZdYAJMmhaUVXB5fcNsu5L4R/jGRjW3tpImybeKkQKgLofkrJqGdd1 WoVbvcQVqcoJcPaQ/w8+jUjsmmaTTX+SWJ98O0691n0zg+tT0KlzEh5jOlOaqoGm Gxyx/31NDYcSrUV3z90C6Ylow0he7/rb4KpQEyikS59BOPENXTZrSXnUwyx/vik1 wD+CNYL7yrPwxXW/Yo52dPeNVBYs5bnyQ+8sjKgDE4PWSbIVl8o9JjMlCkt2VGPv 42Uxhhi0564lsz2CKVPahzqxa6AzmnEAQpkH2A/S0hfTY+IFOvkG+MLuHnCK6s7h ebtSVBqnJaXTBHCRerrGjr+IGK1bvZc9sozgXbAoba7Vs8z/nwdtqn5m4QI2jtVw bsTwYlR4D7qTLnxY6RNEDhfhuZmsSy99Yl6SQffnqc1L4+/pU3ZKZbvobjoJqKR1 m0SvW8dXGn99KlWDCoJJXFMPspULwGXyh5bH19ZNh/+hsAORUl9AfQKTNgnS8/v0 3Z0zsQj3l9WzS7F1qR/zh5ZMfh8OkfJG2gwqbz6xhdY0cyiCVjxR/4z0yIU0SH0i 6zny+TouYpuDIQDiiQ7s =klxN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
