"Choice Blindness" Can Transform Conservatives Into Liberals - and Vice Versa 542
ananyo writes "When U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last year that he was not even going to try to reach 47% of the US electorate, and that he would focus on the 5–10% thought to be floating voters, he was articulating a commonly held opinion: that most voters are locked in to their ideological party loyalty. But Lars Hall, a cognitive scientist at Lund University in Sweden, knew better. When Hall and his colleagues tested the rigidity of people's political attitudes and voting intentions during Sweden's 2010 general election, they discovered that loyalty was malleable: nearly half of all voters were open to changing their minds. Hall's group polled 162 voters during the final weeks of the election campaign, asking them which of two opposing political coalitions — conservative or social democrat/green — they intended to vote for. The researchers also asked voters to rate where they stood on 12 key political issues, including tax rates and nuclear power. The person conducting the experiment secretly filled in an identical survey with the reverse of the voter's answers, and used sleight-of-hand to exchange the answer sheets, placing the voter in the opposite political camp. The researcher invited the voter to give reasons for their manipulated opinions, then summarized their score to give a probable political affiliation and asked again who they intended to vote for. On the basis of the manipulated score, 10% of the subjects switched their voting intentions, from right to left wing or vice versa. Another 19% changed from firm support of their preferred coalition to undecided. A further 18% had been undecided before the survey, indicating that as many as 47% of the electorate were open to changing their minds, in sharp contrast to the 10% of voters identified as undecided in Swedish polls at the time (research paper). Hall has used a similar sleight of hand before to show that our moral compass can often be easily reversed."
Sweden is not the US (Score:5, Insightful)
The mentality between countries are enormous. For example Canada seems like the US but it isn't. Canada thinks the US are evil and sue-happy. They are very liberal because they don't want to become what the US is. I'm not joking, this is pretty much the general consensus on why people vote liberal in Canada from the people I've talked to. Being raised there, I know this mentality well too. But in the US, there's a huge barrier between left and right. The left want their set of ideologies to be met, and the right want their own. The differences are too vast, but the ones that aren't democrat or republican will stick around even as for an independent party. But let's face it, at the end of the day an individual vote does not matter. The united states is a republic, not a democracy.
Submission to Authority (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kind of a moron, aren't you? Assuming that your opinion is the "right" one on all of the topics you list. A big part of the problem is that we limit ourselves to two opinions... liberal and conservative... and then stick to that opinion on all issues.
Personally, I'm liberal on a small portion of topics (mostly social), but fairly conservative on a wide range of other topics. Therefore if I have to label myself, I'd call myself conservative. However, if I were to list where I stand on the current "hot topics", most people would peg me as liberal.
Hey, you can have different opinions on different topics. Who knew?
More like rationalizatoin (Score:5, Insightful)
What I do not see is an actual change of opinion.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree. that's why we need more libertarians in office.
1. corporates won't get special privileges and can't use the government to control markets. They'll actually have to invest their own money in themselvse to improve their positions instead of the taxpayers' money to buy politicians and law.
2. women would have a chance to earn the respect based on their success at relevant life challenges, same as men. The left wing built system bias towards women/against men hurts both genders. It keeps women dependent on the state while inequitably stealing opportunity from men. it also breeds stereotype-based hatred in both genders. Cultural marxism helps no one but the state.
3. #2 also applies to gays. They should have a right to live how they wish like everyone else. They don't deserve the special privileges or attention they get from the left.
4. The argument for gun control is childish at best: "daddy maybe if we make the guns go away no one will kill one another anymore". If the left would address the issues in its own public education system, we'd have fewer klebolds and lanzas out there. If we have people targeting school decades after graduation, there's definitely something rotten in denmark. Of course, it's easier for the left to accuse the other side than it is to face its own demons. People (and hence organizations) that can do this have hit a milestone to adulthood. The rest are still children. Children are easier to control and manipulate.
5. there are libertarians and anarchocapitalists who want to privatize everything, but most don't. There are also liberals who worship karl marx and are members of the USA communist party. Most do not and are not. Your point here is a fallacy.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah Right (Score:4, Insightful)
3. #2 also applies to gays. They should have a right to live how they wish like everyone else. They don't deserve the special privileges or attention they get from the left.
What special privileges do you suppose liberals are trying to get for gays. The right to marry the person of their choice just like a heterosexual can?. The right to not be bullied for being different than the majority of other people? The right to adopt children? The right to not be demonized? The right to dress and act how they want as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else? You mean those special privileges?
4. The argument for gun control is childish at best: "daddy maybe if we make the guns go away no one will kill one another anymore". If the left would address the issues in its own public education system, we'd have fewer klebolds and lanzas out there.
Got any evidence for that. Any at all?
Re:Yeah Right (Score:3, Insightful)
I end up pretty similar. I have both liberal and conservative ideas. I also have some ideas that people will say are liberal or conservative that I have for completely different reasons. Some ideas I see as neither liberal or conservative, they just make sense when considering costs.
For instance if doing X costs Y dollars but preventing the problem costs Z and ZY then I propose we do prevention. It is not liberal or conservative.
What I find it comes down to though is that I care more about social issues that economic ones. So I end up voting for the liberal side even though I agree with the conservatives on many points. My views on abortion is that I don't have the right to make that choice for someone else , they should have that choice. My views on gay marriage are the same. It is not something I am going to do it, it won't harm me in any way but I have seen friends die in the hospital and I have talked to people that could not be with their loved ones because of laws that only allow family and I consider that wrong as hell if not outright evil.
If the republicans took a more liberal social policy and an actual conservative fiscal policy I would find it much easier to support them. I don't really like the democrats fiscal policies very much but I still support them because I believe people should have the right to marry who they want and have an abortion if they want.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:4, Insightful)
In my opinion a lot of people confuse libertarians with anarchists. For example, they assume libertarians are against any and all regulation. We're just against unreasonable regulation. For example, vocal libertarians such as John Stossel support the EPA regulating soot emissions from cars so that we can have clean air. But we hate regulations that for example make certain medications and surgeries needlessly expensive, or surgeries commonly performed overseas with great results that are banned here.
We're also very vocal against handing tax money to private corporations. For example, PBS is insanely profitable (its executives make over 300,000 per year) yet how dare anybody suggest we stop handing them free money, because clearly that means they hate children.
Re:Sweden is not the US (Score:5, Insightful)
The mentality between countries are enormous.
This. Sweden has one of the most educated populations in the world - Tertiary education costs something like 200 euros a year, and so university degrees are not just for the wealthy.
In New York, people will peg you as being a democrat or a republican based on what paper you happen to be reading on the subway. Some of them will get angry about it. Swedish society is far more civil.
Re:Sample of 162 in 9.5 Million (Score:5, Insightful)
This study is pretty obviously not statistically relevant
That's a really great statement there, and I'mma let you finish, but statistical relevance has no relevance here. It's a intellectual-sounding mean-nothing. What you meant was probably statistical significance. And the test of significance is met if the result is unlikely to have happened by chance alone.
You're going to have a hard time justifying a position that this guy's results were just a statistical fluke. You may disagree with the results. You may disagree with the method. You may even disagree with the hypothesis. But you can't say it is a "belief". The only belief here is your own: Specifically, that you believe people's political orientations can't be easily changed because you believe your political orientation is less malleable than what the author has demonstrated.
Not from left to right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My observation (Score:5, Insightful)
An important point. Politics is almost entirely tribal. We can see people voting against their best interests distributed evenly across the political spectrum (including so-called libertarian). And not just voting against their best interests, but even voting against their own firmly held beliefs.
The thing that concerns me almost as much is how much of politics is about being a jerk. Holding a position because it will piss off somebody from the other tribe. Notice how being [conservative, liberal] means that you have to adopt an entire menu of positions, not because you have formed opinions on all of those issues, but because that's what people of the tribe believe.
I'm pretty sure I don't have to point out any examples of this to most of you. It's so obvious as to be startling. That's why it makes news when someone from one political tribe suddenly adopts a position of the other tribe (for example, Rob Portman supports gay marriage). It's news because that's not a position a conservative is supposed to have and he is criticized. The notion that there are clearly delineated "conservative" or "liberal" positions that have to always go together and that people always have to run with the tribe is a hallmark of American politics at least.
It's also a hallmark of a population that's being manipulated. So why the tribes squabble over these territorial trivialities, the people who actually have power are cleaning out the vaults. Does anyone actually believe that we are an exactly 50/50 split country? And yet, that's how it's been working out for decades now. It just smells wrong.
Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you are on, when something bothers you, always ask yourself "Who's really benefiting? You may be surprised at how often the answer is the same people, and they don't belong to either tribe.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, if all it took to be equal was a declaration stating "You are now equal", African-Americans would have been free in 1865. But the real world is considerably more complex, and good intentions not backed by powerful resolve and yes, sometimes force of law and even of arms, often end up becoming empty sentiments. The US government's unwillingness to protect African-Americans from institutionalized racism in the northern states and from the more overt political, judicial and legislative racism in the southern states meant all the high rhetoric of the Abolitionists, The Emancipation Proclamation, and, no kidding, even a goddamned amendment to the Constitution did little bloody good until the Executive finally started doing things like putting soldiers between vile racists and black teenagers just trying to enjoy their lawful and natural rights, supposedly guaranteed nearly a century before.
Keep a bird in a cage most of its life, then declare if free and chuck if out the window. See how that works.
Re:Not from left to right (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not true that our politicians aren't for wealth redistribution. In fact, they're pretty evenly divided between wanting slow upward wealth redistribution, or very rapid upward wealth redistribution.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
So you are for regulations where they are successful and making a net positive impact and against regulations where they are useless or hurting without net positive impact? Is that you call "libertarians"? I call it "common sense".
Re:My observation (Score:4, Insightful)
I look at it more of a game of tug-of-war with a multi-pointed star of rope. Society is the knot floating in the middle of the star and the extremists trying to pull it in their direction. I jump on the Libertarian side and pull hard, not because I want a Libertarian utopian anarchy, but because I think the center of the star has floated a bit to far over the totalitarian side then I am comfortable with. If it moves back in the Liberty direction then I'd be less likely to tug as hard and more likely to enjoy that society has given me nice roads and at least a basically educated populace.
Re:Sweden is not the US (Score:5, Insightful)
"Sweden has one of the most educated populations in the world"
Yet they can't see that answered they just gave to a test have been changed and they defend the new answers? Perhaps they should go back for quality education rather than just most.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Judgement free zones are not a right. See, the problem with identity politics is that certain groups are shielded from criticism. So the employer of a gay person has to tread lightly when the gay employee doesn't do a good job, or risk a lawsuit. This is true for women and non-white people as well. Any accusation can be deflected with a counteraccusation of discrimination (or in the case with women, outright assault). Conversely, when a protected group member gets a promotion/access to exclusive schooling/wins a legal case etc, the unprotected groups are left wondering whether this person got it by earning it, or due to (legal or white knighted) political manipulation. This PC culture has invaded nearly every aspect of life.
People in free societies do not have the right to not be criticized because the same right to wear their shit on their shoulders if they choose gives others the right to criticize (or complement) in response. In order to protect this, our culture needs to (re)learn the coping skills that, really, all people should have learned by age 15. What we have today is a culture that runs crying to the courts every time its butt gets hurt. The solution is to fix the oversensitivity, not to whitewash everything down to the lowest common denominator in order to avoid offense. The latter builds even more sensitive people who'll bitch about even smaller minutiae.
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The people advocating for restrictions should be the ones who have to justify themselves.
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I think there's plenty of examples, both from media outlets and in anecdotal experiences about the passive aggressive bullying and psychological manipulation that goes on in american public schools these days. The fact these shooters are targeting schools (for many, the one they graduated from) instead of just going apeshit in random places with lots more targets, suggests that their school experiences played a large role in their motivations.
Simply locking the tools away will not stop people from taking things apart. All it might do is raise the difficulty bar slightly, so instead of 26 kids dying by gunfire, it'll be 260 kids dying from a homemade explosive. The latter is harder to make/use and thus needs more motivation, but it does a lot more damage The right way to deal with these kinds of issues is to find the systemic sources and minimize them. Jumping to reactionary containment policies just builds pressure to the next critical point, resulting in more extreme reactions and counterreactions that are ultimately self defeating for everyone.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, it's the rate of violence that matters, not the rate of "gun violence". Being shot to death isn't any worse than being poisoned or stabbed to death. Secondly, the rate of violent crime in the US is down by more than half over the same time period, so maybe it's the gun laws an maybe it isn't. Finally, improved safety is not an especially good reason to give up on important freedoms. Banning guns or imposing strict controls only sounds reasonable to people who don't value their gun rights in the first place.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here. The only 2 planks of the republican party I agree with are smaller government and gun control is (usually) wrong. Yet those are my 2 strongest beliefs, hence I tend to vote republican even when the candidate is a total douchebag. To my mind, keeping taxes down and protecting the 2nd amendment override my feelings on gay marriage, abortion, evolution in schools, immigration, racism, ... oh jeez everytime I do this I wonder why I still support republicans.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:3, Insightful)
sorry, forgot to say one more thing.. as far as marriage goes, I think the state should not get involved with it, period. That frees up legal adults to enter whatever contracts they like with whomever they like.
As far as bullying goes, like I said in my other post, a lot of it comes from the systemic problems in schools, but as individuals, kids need to learn coping skills to deal with it, and adults need to be more tolerant of schoolyard squabbling.. better they have it out with fists in 6th grade than let it simmer in passive aggressive squabbling until losing it senior year. Of course, fist fights result in borderline expulsions nowadays: a prime example of that oversensitive culture overreacting.
Adoption isn't a right. It's a privilege and for good reason.
Anyone has a right to dress and act how they choose, but, like I said before, others also have the right to judge you fit or unfit in some context as a result. It's society's job to ensure children mature and become as personally secure as possible. It is not society's job to encourage and then prop up insecurity, no matter what the hilarys, obamas, and other sob story hucksters of identity politics would have us think.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullying can also go way over the line and teachers rarely step in to stop it. Kids do learn coping skills, they are not always skills you want them to learn. Some of them have learned that shooting their classmates gets rid of the problem. It is hard to stand up to 20+ kids that want to beat you up because the teacher pointed out that you wrecked the curve for the entire class. You start to learn other methods to deal with problems. You do things like read up on human anatomy and learn nerve strikes. Kids are some of the nastiest creatures around and adults can and should intervene to keep things from getting out of hand.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
The general idea for 'hate crimes' is a person commits a major felony, from a select list of violent felonies, AND the evidence indicates there are additional consequences to many other people AND the perp meant to produce those consequences. That's how these laws are written in the overwhelming majority of cases, that the prosecution has to prove ALL those things. I.e Criminal X committed, for example, Murder One, and Criminal X also indicated there was intention to make many other people suffer, fear for their lives, stop exercising their rights, or otherwise be injured. Whether it's a klansman hanging a black man for having made efforts to get more black people to the polls on election day, or a rapist sending a letter to the local paper warning all women to get back to the home or be presumed whores who deserve what he's dishing out, the person charged has to commit a major felony, and has to make threats or otherwise indicate they are trying to do additional harm to others by it. So why is it a conservative position to be soft on particularly violent murderers and rapists who are trying to add more victims to their talley? How did the conservative movement ever become the appologists for the worst of the worst? How does this idea that liberals are the ones soft on crime persist when self appointed spokesmen for the right are reduced to trying to oppose punishing murderers and rapists for aggravating circumstances? Read the actual laws, not what some nut such as Coulter has said about them, and decide for yourself.
Not to be paranoid... (Score:2, Insightful)
You have different positions on "seemingly" opposite sides... but the "sides" are artificial. There are lots of folks like you. The problem is the current setup has polarized everyone into one camp or the other, when, in reality, they are BOTH chiseling away our rights. Neither side ever UNDOES what the other side does, just adds their own rules, as they take turns in power.
The way things are going, we will soon be back to a two tier society - the ruling class and the serfs. America had a pretty good run at letting the free go, for a while, but now it is going back to traditional ways...
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
3. #2 also applies to gays. They should have a right to live how they wish like everyone else. They don't deserve the special privileges or attention they get from the left.
What special privileges do you suppose liberals are trying to get for gays. The right to marry the person of their choice just like a heterosexual can?.
The special privileges granted to married couples. How about we just do away with those entirely? Allow people to form whatever family units they want. Don't give special tax statuses. Allow inheritance under uniform rules. Allow whomever somebody wants to be involved in medical decisions.
Recognizing gay marriage perpetuates the problem; the real solution is to de-recognize marriage as a special state of being. Just let people make their own decisions.
Re:Eh, they were against women voting and civil ri (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if the Republicans of 1915 were running in current races, that would be a different matter. Heck, even the Republican party that supported Reagan-era top marginal tax rates (higher top tax rates than now) would provide a nice alternative slightly to the left of Obama. But the Republicans (and Democrats) of 2012 have little to do with groups of the same name from decades ago. With the exception of Byrd, most of the notorious anti-civil-rights Democrats (like the long-lived Strom Thurmond) eventually switched party affiliations, and ended their careers as Republican candidates. The "Southern Strategy" era, where the Republican party intentionally courted the racist vote to turn the once-solidly-blue South into the solid "red" area today was remarkably successful, and cemented the modern Republican party as undisputed champions of neo-Confederate racists and the Religious "women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" Right.
So, if you're blind to the last several decades of history, you might accidentally vote for the Republican party assuming that they were progressives in civil and gender rights. However, assuming you haven't Rip-Van-Winkled the last couple decades away in slumber, it's pretty obvious where the party currently stands.
Re:Eh, they were against women voting and civil ri (Score:0, Insightful)
Ah yes, the party from 1915. Let's vote for them.
Wait, how many of them are still in office?
But actually, it wasn't a Democrat filibuster. It was a Southern Conservative filibuster. That promptly joined the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act was passed, or did you never learn who Strom Thurmond was, or hear that he put an -R by his name when on the ballot?
I guess you expected us to ignore that, while focusing on your representation of Byrd. Huh.
Word? Naivete.
Too bad for you I watched Jon Stewart tonight. Seriously, I don't get why Republicans think they can bamboozle everybody with history to the point where we stupidly ignore what's happening today. It's like they think if they pour enough bullshit, we'll actually believe the crap they spew.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:0, Insightful)
just enact reasonable measure to ensure only appropriate guns are available for appropriate means
and then what ends up happening is every few years, they decide to change what constitutes "appropriate" until nothing is appropriate.
the anti-gun agenda is total disarmament, full stop, end of discussion. that may not be your personal opinion or goal, but it IS the goal you are being used for.
open your eyes [guncite.com]
Re:Not from left to right (Score:1, Insightful)
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
-- Winston Churchill
No need to tell us, it was obvious (Score:1, Insightful)
Too bad for you I watched Jon Stewart tonight. Seriously, I don't get why Republicans think they can bamboozle everybody with history
You didn't need to specifically tell us that you get your news and information from a comedian, that's obvious.
Sorry to be throwing all those historical facts at you. I know Maher-Stewart drones prefer wishes over facts.
Facts are stubborn things.
Re:No need to tell us, it was obvious (Score:0, Insightful)
You didn't need to tell us that you'd rather try to ignore how Jon Stewart managed to tear down your lies and deceptions just that same day, purely by coincidence.. Sorry to be refuting your false recounting of history. I know you prefer to be able to bullshit unquestioned rather than actually be challenged.
But...you know what? There's truth in comedy. So thanks dude, you've just shown you'd rather stick your fingers in your ears and mouth lies than actually stick up for the truth.
That's the Republican way, you think we're naive.
Re:My observation (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, balancing the budget is just, to put it bluntly, a really bad idea. There's a reason companies will frequently borrow to expand themselves. It is often the case that to do so produces better returns than the interest/dividends rates one has to pay on those loans/dividends/whatever. By the same token, government action into funding research (which leads to people/companies expanding the economy) and social programs (which provide a base framework of funding to keep the economic engine running even in bad times) can well pay for themselves. How do I know this to be true? Because rather consistently while the US debt has grown, the GDP has grown at a faster rate.
Actually that isn't the case at all. The budget deficit is increasing faster than the GDP is growing.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fc/U.S._Total_Deficits_vs._National_Debt_Increases_2001-2010.png [wikimedia.org]
This means that the debt keeps getting bigger and bigger, even adjusting for inflation. When a company becomes heavily in debt, shows only the possibility of increasing debt, and its assets can't be liquidated to make up for that debt, the debtors begin to lose trust that this company will ever repay its assets and will stop lending.
The US government is doing exactly that. Sooner or later one of two things is going to happen. Either they print so much money that the dollar gets to a point where no foreign governments will accept it for trade (it has already done that in many places) that it eventually becomes worthless to the US citizens as well, so there would be no point in buying government bonds because you wouldn't gain anything by doing so, which results in the government having no more money to borrow, and government employees (soldiers, teachers, contractors, etc) no longer get paid, so the government basically just shuts down. Or, if they stop printing money, they'll default on their loans, and nobody buys bonds anyways.
Greece is what happens when governments go bankrupt. Now imagine that on a much larger scale.
Taxing the shit out of the wealthy won't solve the problem either, for a multitude of reasons. Poor people don't hire other people. Making the rich poor is a bad idea for that reason. Also, if you even hint at doing so, they can and WILL leave. Look at France. A few years back they made tax increases designed to bring in an extra $120 billion in revenue, and the result was a net reduction of $50 billion in revenue below what they already had. Why? Because people just left, many of them bringing their businesses along with them, even people who lived in France over generations proudly spanning from time immemorial. Trying to fix that problem by preventing people from leaving is just asking for a civil war. Ceasing assets will result in what is happening in Cyprus right now.
Go look at all of the nasty things that Johnny Depp had to say about America prior to permanently moving to France back in 2003 or so, how evil America is, and how France was this beautiful paradise. After realizing that they were basically taxing away basically everything he had, he RAN back to America as fast as he could.
Taxing your way out of a budget deficit is like trying to dig your way out of a hole.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
I would find this maybe sensical if the Republicans had, in the last ten or twenty years, ever actually tried to advocate for policies that were likely to actually lead to lower taxes. You can't be the party of small government while creating whole new categories of quasi-law-enforcement with unlimited powers and no accountability, and proposing to spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money trying to force the creation of Creationist-friendly textbooks, prevent women from getting abortions, prevent gay people from marrying, and so on.
They aren't the party of smaller government, and haven't been in a long time. They are the party that uses the phrase "small government" a lot while constantly looking for new ways to expand government powers and spend more money.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:4, Insightful)
America doesn't have a financially liberal party
Really? Because the Republicans want to tax me and liberally give to oil and defense subsidies and CEOs, while the Democrats want to tax me and liberally give to the health insurance companies and alternate energy subsidies and CEOs.
Re:Yeah Right (Score:2, Insightful)
You're not surprised that there isn't an Asian American month, Jewish American month, Gay American month...? Now a White American month, well that would be just racist.
Amen! Parent is soo true! But.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't mind me trying to get the first thread back on track, the results quoted here apply to Sweden, not necessarily the U.S.
Sweden has a multi-party parliamentary system. Parliamentary system do create inequality that favors established parties, especially first-past-the-post ones like the U.K. Yet, their process of government formation means electing small parties isn't automatic pork suicide for districts. So at least some small parties get in and influence the direction for future changes.
In other words, Swedes change their mind because they've some choice. American parties more resemble sports teams. Yes, one plays nastier than the other, but fundamentally Americans might not change their minds because neither party represents much meaningful change.