Posted by Jim Lindgren:
Redistibutionists tend to be Angry and to Plot Revenge.
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_04_05-2009_04_11.shtml#1239004924
Oliver Willis [1]repeats the views
of Kos:
The conservative blogs are enraged that people are pointing out
that they have and are stoking the fires of an atmosphere of hate
that leads to police officers getting killed. As I�ve written for
years, this is part of their pattern of behavior in America and for
too long we�ve accepted their verbal diarrhea and incitements to
violence as honest political dialogue and not the insanity it is.
. . . Its days like this I�m glad that when I was deciding what
side of the political aisle I wanted to be on, I didn�t make the
same mistake as Glenn Reynolds and choose the one where we
encourage people to shoot cops.
In taking apart Kos�s views, Confederate Yankee is [2]too generous to
the Kos/Willis position:
Anger, is an emotion. It is apolitical and amoral, neither right
nor wrong nor identifiable with a party affiliation. It is how a
person choses to channel anger into action that defines him as good
or evil or benign.
This is true, but there are patterns in opinions and attitudes. I
discuss some of them in "Testing Social Dominance: Is Support for
Capitalism and Opposition to Income Redistribution Driven by Racism
and Intolerance?," a chapter of my Ph.D. thesis that I�ve presented at
faculty workshops at Yale and the Univ. of Chicago, as well as
academic conferences. An earlier version can be downloaded [3]here.
Contrary to the prevailing view of political psychologists, those
who support capitalism and oppose income redistribution do not
express traditionally racist or intolerant attitudes. Indeed, they
tend to express views that are slightly less racist and intolerant
than other Americans. The Von Mises thesis posits that
redistributionists are driven by envy for the property of others
and a frustration with one�s lot in a capitalist system. If that
were true, one would expect redistributionists to express more
unhappiness, anger, and a desire for revenge�and they do. In
General Social Surveys, both redistributionists and
anti-capitalists express significantly lower satisfaction with
their financial situations and with their jobs or housework.
Indeed, they report that they are less happy overall and have less
happy marriages.
The 1996 General Social Survey explored the emotional makeup of
Americans in greater depth. About 900 respondents were asked: �On
how many days in the last 7 days, have you felt� happy, sad,
lonely, calm, anxious, angry, tense and angry, and twelve other
emotions. I compared these results to the results on an income
redistribution question, EQLWLTH . . . .
As Table 3-3 illustrates, strong redistributionists (category 1)
reported that they �worried a lot about little things� on about one
more day a week than strong anti-redistributionists (category 7):
3.3 days a week compared to 2.3 days a week. They also reported
being �lonely� and being unable to �shake the blues� on about an
additional day a week. Strong redistributionists (category 7) also
reported about one fewer day a week on which they were �happy,�
�contented,� and �at ease.�
In terms of relative odds (Table 3-3), compared to strong
anti-redistributionists (category 7), strong redistributionists
(category 1) had about two to three times higher odds of reporting
that in the prior seven days they were �angry� (2.0 times higher
odds), �mad at something or someone� (1.9 times), �outraged at
something somebody had done (1.9 times), sad (2.1 times), lonely
(2.3 times), and unable to �shake the blues� (3.5 times).
Similarly, as Table 3-4 shows, anti-redistributionists had about
280% higher odds of reporting being happy (3.8 times) and about
110% higher odds of reporting that they were at ease (2.1 times).
Overall, favoring income redistribution positively predicted 9 of
12 superficially negative emotions and negatively predicted 4 of 7
superficially positive emotions, which was a remarkably consistent
pattern. The data are consistent with redistributionists in the
general public being considerably more angry, sad, lonely, worried,
and restless, and less happy, at ease, and interested in life.
Not only do redistributionists report more anger, but they report
that their anger lasts longer. Further, when asked about the last
time they were angry, strong redistributionists were more than
twice as likely as strong opponents of leveling to admit that they
responded to their anger by plotting revenge.
But do these attitudes have behavioral consequences? In other
words, are the data consistent with the hypothesis that
anti-redistributionists are more generous or altruistic? Data from
self-reports in the General Social Survey (Table 3-5) appear to
support the notion that those who oppose income redistribution are
somewhat more altruistic in their behavior than redistributionists.
It is sad that Willis would point to Republicans as particularly angry
or vengeful, when those who strongly favor income redistribution were
more than twice as likely as strong opponents of leveling to admit
that they responded to their anger by plotting revenge.
References
1. http://www.oliverwillis.com/2009/04/05/truth-stings/
2. http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/285479.php
3. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=945932
_______________________________________________
Volokh mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
