I find it interesting that Mr. Saletan not only dismisses the study but also offers no explanation for the fact that the study found a statistically significant difference in the response patterns of liberals and conservatives. Could it be that Mr. Saletan is demonstrating the persistent habitual conservative response pattern of dismissing new information, in this case without providing an alternative interpretation of the results?

I’m not a cognitive psychologist so I cannot argue about the interpretation of the study’s results. Still, I do know that the point of such studies are to test behavioral patterns in a manner that is not influenced by such intractable influences such as social context, education level and semantics, hence the simple and objective tests with letters on a screen.

Mr. Saletan’s assertion that “our standard of "information" is a bit tougher than the blips and fads you fall for” to truly defy logic. The standards of information used by conservatives to plunge this nation into a war were absurd at the very least.

For conservatives science is a buffet where you pick what you like and dismiss what you find inconvenient. Despite the fact that the vast majority of scientists, around the world, and across many fields of study, support the conclusion that global warming in driven my human activity, conservatives dismiss it as lacking sufficient evidence. Conversely, the pseudo-science of intelligent design is accepted as fact despite lacking anything resembling real scientific support.

I recall that some time ago a long-term child development study found that children that were less able to deal with novel situations or changes were significantly more likely to become politically conservative later in life while children that were better able to cope of novel situations were significantly more likely to become politically liberal as adults. Oh, yeah, one more thing. Children that were more likely to become conservatives also tended to cry more. So much for "crying liberals".

The really funny and in you face obvious thing about ol'williams artical is that everything about it PROVES what the original artical claims!Don't these faux news watching zombie contards see thier own stupidity in thier reaction to stuff like this?And one of these fools is running the country!!

Nicely stated hon. I guess that's why I decided to marry you!

I find it typical of groups proposing tests that are designed to prove conclusions already held, that 'voila' They are not as smart as we are after all. "wink wink". This is how the weak minded conduct their business. Confirm only ones predjuduces. Ignore or twist facts. Appear fair but actually be condescending. And a ha! we win after all!

VictorP

"For conservatives science is a buffet where you pick what you like and dismiss what you find inconvenient. "

Really? You personally know enough conservatives to be able to make a sweeping, and totally unsupported, generalization like this?

"Despite the fact that the vast majority of scientists, around the world, and across many fields of study, support the conclusion that global warming in driven my human activity, conservatives dismiss it as lacking sufficient evidence."

Again.....Really? The "vast majority of scientists?" Yes, there are quite a number of scientists, and in all truth, from a broad number of different fields many of which have nothing even remotly related to the study of global warming, that support the premise that humans are the root cause of the current climate shift. On the other hand, there are a significant number of scientists that do specialize in areas that directly relate to climate that do not support those conclustions. FYI - a survey I recently saw stated that the number of those cute cuddly polar bears that every global warming supporter likes to throw in our faces as endangered... well there are currently almost twice the number as there were 20 years ago.

And how about the un-named study you refer to? Was the methodology as flakey as what is used in this study?

Good thing that us slow witted conservatives have big smart liberals like you around to keep us straight! As Satalan stated “You haven't told us much about our way of thinking. But you've told us a lot about yours.”

Could it be so simple as the conservative mind slows down & thinks for a split micro second, hey this is different & may not be right. The liberal mind is use to jumping from one point of view to the other doing what ever it is told by an agreeable authority figure to it???

I find it interesting that someone could take this so seriously that they are actually using this as a pedestal to brag about their own intelligence. In fact, if any one of you out there thinks that we can all of a sudden generally categorize who is smarter based on a political bias, than you are obvioulsy much dumber than you think you are.

For some to categorize a whole class of people and how they think about science is prejudicial. And it is the exposure of that prejudice that leads me to believe that the entire premise for the article is false. Because if the liberals are going to be prejudiced against the conservatives and how they think, then isn't that in and of itself a dumb remark? Haven't we as a society deemed prejudice to be uneducated, uncultured, unreformed, and unnecessary? Apparently not all of society has yet.

And for the writer of this blog who talks about the standard of information that led this country into a war as being absurd, I am guessing that the standard was less absurd for Senators Clinton and Lieberman, who are two of the most notorious liberal Senators in the Senate. And oh, by the way, they voted for the war the conservatives have apparently led us into.

I don't get liberals. You all think conservatives want war. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I want is a world I am not afraid to let my kids live in. You can't negotiate or use diplomacy with a people that hate you to the core. The bottom line is brutally harsh. These people are willing to die for their cause. The vast majority of Americans can't bear to see one soldier die in a war. When did that happen? We obliterated two cities 65 years ago in the name of saving American lives. Nobody had a problem with it then. When did we grow a conscience? What did we do that made them kill 3000 people who went to work on 9/11. If we do nothing, they will continue to come up with more attacks like 9/11. The USS Cole, an American WARSHIP was attacked. Isn't that an act of war? We did nothing.

I find it tough to find blame with going after Sadaam. While I do not think he was directly involved with 9/11, the world is certainly a better place since he took his last breath. Why? Because he can't gas his own people again. And when you find Abu Nidal (only the premier terrorist in the world after Osama) living in a luxury apartment in downtown Baghdad, it's tough to say Iraq didn't support terrorism. Do we need another reason than that?

We as a country need to grow a pair of you know what. It is a time of war. We have the capabilities of winning this war in a minute. But because we aren't willing to pay the price as a country to defeat a rag tag group of Republican Guard who dropped their guns and ran into the general population. If you want this to turn into Vietnam and really have those soldiers lives who died mean nothing, then pull everyone out and watch Iraq crumble before your eyes. Or, we can man up as a country, support our troops, and do WHATEVER is necessary to not only win the war, but ensure that the lives of heroes who died in battle, the people who died so that the liberal can continue to whine and keep their way of life, didn't die in futility

The behavior that MtnMig criticizes, while a legitimate indictment of the so-called "Neo-Con", is not reflective of true conservatism. Unfortunately, the "Neo Con" philosophy (can it be called a philosophy?) seems to be dominating the conservative landscape (and media) in recent years.

I have great respect for the true conservatives I have known -- good friends with whom I can argue late into the night, and usually end-up on one side or the other of a near-draw.

It is true that liberals tend to like to explore and push new things, while conservatives prefer to adhere to the proven. This balance is the essential yin and yang that can keep our country great.

What is tearing us apart is the apparent belief that either conservatives or liberals (depending on who is talking) are bent on destroying America as we know it, and must be stopped. We need both in equal, thoughtful, and respectful measures to get this country back on track.

The way we are going, we are rapidly heading toward global irrelevance as we feed our political civil war.

So what about this study? Irrelevant.

The experiment proves nothing except that half-baked experiments can be interpreted any way you want. This thread is a great indicator of that.

The liberals at the beginning of the thread are all "yes, yes, I'm so intelligent and open minded and this experiment proves that. Conservatives really are ALL tunnel-visioned and subjective."

The conservatives at the end of the thread point out how the experiment and the liberal interpretation actually can show that in fact conservatives are more reasonable and intelligent in how the slower reaction time might suggest they process information more thoroughly and less rashly.

I will point out that conservatism and liberalism are part of a spectrum of ideology. Being strictly one or the other, by definition alone, makes a person less adaptive. As a conservative, I refuse to be part of the sexual revolution and I don't believe sexual preference to be an issue anyone should have to hear about or deal with -- they don't matter because they are all about self indulgence -- not a pressing issue in my opinion. So I simply refuse to change because I hold fast to my principles. On other matters, such as resources and the environment, I have views that would be considered more liberal -- i.e. I feel that people should not cite religous or economic reasoning to give themselves the right to exploit resources and destroy habitat and wildlife. I believe religion is weak and drugs/alcohol/gambling are for losers. I'm conservative or liberal on a case by case basis, I think about each scenerio and form opinions based on the facts available to me...and I could destroy any hippie in a game of M's and W's.

There is only one nay sayer, the hurricane guy, that has any standing in this argument about global warming. Conservatives hang their hats on that one, lone voice against thousands. The article should have gone a bit further in characterizing the makeup of todays conservatives. They should have noted that pre-conceived opinions always find justification if the criteria for acceptance is weak enough. Conservatives are just plain greedy if intelligent, ignorant if less so. The most important missing element of conservatism is a moral justification for greed and power. They keep searching the Bible for a psalm that says:

In the end, its all about the money, nothing else matters. All except power that is, all except power.

As a wise man once said, if you care more about money than people, you are a Republican. If you care more about people than money, you are a Democrat. Nothing in my 51 years of living has disproven that basic statement of fact.

You are not really a conservative nor are you a liberal. You are just a person that thinks. There is no such thing as a liberal ideology yet I can tell you about scores of books and articles expounding ad nauseum about what it means to be a conservative. In todays world, a liberal is anyone a conservative calls a liberal. When the right is now further right than the John Birch Society, its not hard to be on the left. Its where everyone is these days, to the left of 500 miles to the right of center.

Heh, yeah I just put that at the end as humour.

What you say makes sense. I always think of left and right, but the lines of the left do seem to be more blurred than that of the right, particularly in the U.S.. I, however, am Canadian and our conservative government at present is doing the best job anyone could hope for in these trying times...while the liberals for as long as I can remember have focused primarily on inter-party warfare and slander. The last time they were in power we went from one political scandal to another every week. I agree with most of the policies of our current government and I am disgusted by the criticisms from the NDP and Liberals -- so that's where I get this feeling of being conservative. I may not understand this well enough -- if liberals have no ideology, does that mean they lack principle? Where do they derive their principles, or do they just go wherever the current takes them?

lacking an ideology only means that you lack a pre-determined set of rules for decision making. I think people are liberals because they see each problem on its own and find the best answer. The only ideology we share is one that says do the most good for the most people.

Its very important for liberals to feel morally and intellectually superior, so this "study" is predictable. If the results had turned out to favor conservatives, nobody would have ever hear about it. Perhaps more significant is the professions people choose. Conservatives tend to closed-loop (result-oriented) jobs (engineering, business) while liberals like open-loop jobs like the arts and jobs funded by government (civil-service, teaching). Enviornmentalists have predicted global cooling, acid-rain disaster, the "population bomb", all of which were wrong or grossly over-blown, but the predictors suffer no loss of reputation. The engineers who missed the bridge collapse are toast.

MtnMig,

Don’t you know how to proof read? You wrote, "global warming in driven my human activity". I don’t care about what is driving your human activity…TMI (LOL). Oh yeah, makes a good case for liberals being more intelligent! And you had the nerve to make reference that Conservatives didn’t check their facts before going to Iraq…good thing you aren’t running the country, you can’t even check your posts. Further, you say that there is no real scientific support for intelligent design, yet if you think for a second that our perfectly designed bodies, with every part serving its purpose, just "happened to be", or came from "the pond", you truly are lost. If you seek the truth earnestly, YOU WILL find it.