Understanding conservatives: how like a Democrat.

I have this good friend from childhood who is now a Republican. I was almost as dismayed as he must have been when he found out I was an atheist. I mean, I like him a lot and he’s a great guy, but a Republican? What could have made him align with the most corrupt, incompetant, and dishonest American political movement in living memory?

Today I’m grappling with why people are political conservatives, especially in the current environment. I went through the ‘Stern Father’ theory — that Bush reminds them of their pushy, distant male authority figure. Then I tried out the ‘Obligatory Enemy’ theory, and the ‘Parents Let Them Cry’ theory, followed by the ‘Locked in a Treehouse with Too Little Air in It’ theory. None really explained the phenomenon in a meaningful way. At the moment I’m working off a really unhelpful theory called the ‘Bad Person Hypothesis’. Seriously, what else could turn someone into the trigger-happy, paranoid, finger-pointing, xenophobic, snotty ball of aggression that characterises the right-wing blogospherian? Except that they’re bad people. Like it’s only been a week since a major gun incident, and already Dinesh D’Souza has lambasted atheists, and Newt Gingrich has blamed liberalism. It’s like I’ve been attacked twice, and I haven’t even shot anyone. It’s enough to make you want to… well, you can imagine.

On better days, I decide that conservatives are the way they are because they’re at the mercy of emotions they cannot control nor understand. And if I had to pick one emotion that motivates them, I’d say fear. Conservatives are fearful. Look at how they respond to the fear button, which gets pressed at every opportunity. Out pops the template: “What are you going to do when they come for your…” and then you can fill the space with the noun du jour: guns? or your women? Your hetero marriage. Or your bibles, or your jobs. Your money or your fetus.

Fortunately, fine minds have been working on the psychological profile of the American conservative, and their results appear in this article from 2003: “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition”. Here are some findings from the abstract, and note the numbers:

A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (–.32); uncertainty tolerance (–.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (–.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (–.09).

Ouch.

The paper helps to answer one of the trickiest questions of electoral behaviour: why do the poorest Americans overwhelmingly vote Republican, even though they are hurt most by its policies?

[M]any of the theories we integrate suggest that motives to overcome fear, threat, and uncertainty may be associated with increased conservatism, and some of these motives should be more pronounced among members of disadvantaged and low-status groups. As a result, the disadvantaged might embrace right-wing ideologies under some circumstances to reduce fear, anxiety, dissonance, uncertainty, or instability, whereas the advantaged might gravitate toward conservatism for reasons of self-interest or social dominance.

Isn’t that something? So if I were a Machiavellian bastard, I’d realise that the more uncertain I could make the lives of the poor, the more I could count on their support. Until they figured it out. Which they never will if I can keep hitting the fear buttons. Fnord! FNORD!

The rest of the paper is dotted with interesting insights. Worth a read, despite the length. I’d be interested in using this thread as a book-club type discussion. Anyone find anything else interesting?