More junk psychology

There is an amusing post here, repeated here under the heading "Right Wing Personalities have greater trouble remembering what they read and making correct inferences". From that title one would expect that the post would have something to do with the conservative side of politics as we know it today. The author certainly seems to think that it does. BUT IT DOESN'T.

The post reports a bit of low-quality psychological "research" based on no sampling of any known population that relies for its measuring instrument on the old "RWA scale" devised by Bob Altemeyer. It is high scorers on Altemeyer's selection of questions who were "shown" to have poor memories. But the RWA scale has nothing to do with current politics. As I pointed out very recently:

Altemeyer's own statement about this may be worth noting (From p. 239 of "Enemies of Freedom"):

"right-wing authoritarians show little preference in general for any political party".

So the type of conservatism studied by Altemeyer is a rather peculiar subset of it -- one with virtually no everyday political relevance
.

And note the implication: Voters for Leftist political parties are just as likely to be "Right-wing authoritarians" as are voters for conservative parties!

Confusing? Sure is! So how come? It all goes back to dippy old Altemeyer himself. He did not have a blind clue about what "right-wing" or "conservative" meant. He was so clueless about politics that he accepted the old Leftist lie that conservatives are simply people who oppose change! So, by his criterion, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan -- who were great advocates and agents of change -- were not conservative!

From Burke onwards, conservatives have been denying that they simply oppose all change but you cannot expect a Leftist psychologist to know any history, of course. I have summarized the history of what conservatives believe at geat length here and the ongoing theme is of course a belief in individual liberty.

So if poor old Alty did not know what conservatism was, it is no wonder that he found what he thought to be Rightist beliefs to be common among Leftists! Hilarious!

Other psychologists have made the same mistake. It shows what a bubble they must live in. All the conservatives I know would like to see a HEAP of things changed about our society. The idea that conservatives oppose all change is so totally brain-dead that anybody who believes it must never have talked to a real live conservative.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

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