Thursday, March 23, 2006

How to spot a baby conservative

A new study published in the Journal of Research Into Personality by a UC Berkeley professor, Jack Block, who followed 95 children for 20 years. Those who were whiny, paranoid, and complaining as children turned out to be conservatives. Those who were confident and self-reliant turned out to be liberals. This is supporting evidence for similar work by John T. Jost at Stanford, but Block's work is labeled as "biased, shoddy work" by Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona. (Link is to coverage in the Toronto Star.)

UPDATE: There are some good criticisms of the Block study by Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy (here and here).

Posted by Lippard at 3/23/2006 08:27:00 AM

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1 comment:

Kat Lippard said...

I was whiny and PARANOID(but not so much of a complainer) as a child - by no means self confident - but I'm almost as liberal as you can get, as you know. And I've never been a conservative.

March 23, 2006 at 12:24 PM

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