Roommates: It's Enough To Make You Conservative

[Christopher D. Green]

Perhaps conservatives should thank their lucky stars for a largely "liberal" professoriate. Apparently having leftist college roommates causes people to become more conservative adults. (see NYT ariticle below). Maybe the same is true for having leftist professors. :-) Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-5115 ex. 66164 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo ============================== Roommates: It's Enough To Make You Conservative By KATE STONE LOMBARDI Published: January 16, 2005 THEY'RE sloppy. They have overnight guests. You don't get to pick them. And now this: roommates may affect your politics and your grades. David J. Zimmerman, an economics professor at Williams College, recently looked at the political views of 3,500 students who had shared rooms as freshmen, noting their leanings when they started college and again three years after graduation. Generally, roommates kept the same political persuasion -- except those freshmen whose roommates were on the far left of the political spectrum. No matter what their politics at enrollment, they were more likely than similar students to be conservative as adults. ''It's reactionary in some way,'' says Mr. Zimmerman, who surveyed two colleges. Ann Coulter, author of ''How to Talk to a Liberal (if You Must),'' had this to say: ''Not much to explain. They see liberal hygiene up close.'' The study also found that the higher the SAT score, the more liberal the views. In separate research, Mr. Zimmerman and Gordon C. Winston, another Williams economics professor, uncovered more unsettling evidence of peer influence: freshmen rooming with the weakest students experienced a slight drop in grades. The researchers divided 5,000 onetime roommates at four colleges into three groups: those who scored in the top 15 percent of the SAT verbal scores admitted to the college, those in the bottom 15 percent, and everyone in between. On average, grades of the typical students who roomed with low scorers were pulled down by a 10th of a grade point by graduation. No other impact was noticed. Middling students are distracted, Mr. Zimmerman suggests. ''It's the beer effect, not the peer effect.'' --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]