More On Turning Conservatives Into Liberals

WaPo had an article on it:

Conservatives, it turns out, react more strongly to physical threat than liberals do. In fact, their greater concern with physical safety seems to be determined early in life: In one University of California study, the more fear a 4-year-old showed in a laboratory situation, the more conservative his or her political attitudes were found to be 20 years later. Brain imaging studies have even shown that the fear center of the brain, the amygdala, is actually larger in conservatives than in liberals. And many other laboratory studies have found that when adult liberals experienced physical threat, their political and social attitudes became more conservative (temporarily, of course). But no one had ever turned conservatives into liberals.

Until we did.

In a new study to appear in a forthcoming issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology, my colleagues Jaime Napier, Julie Huang and Andy Vonasch and I asked 300 U.S. residents in an online survey their opinions on several contemporary issues such as gay rights, abortion, feminism and immigration, as well as social change in general…

But before they answered the survey questions, we had them engage in an intense imagination exercise. They were asked to close their eyes and richly imagine being visited by a genie who granted them a superpower. For half of our participants, this superpower was to be able to fly, under one’s own power. For the other half, it was to be completely physically safe, invulnerable to any harm.

If they had just imagined being able to fly, their responses to the social attitude survey showed the usual clear difference between Republicans and Democrats — the former endorsed more conservative positions on social issues and were also more resistant to social change in general.

But if they had instead just imagined being completely physically safe, the Republicans became significantly more liberal — their positions on social attitudes were much more like the Democratic respondents. And on the issue of social change in general, the Republicans’ attitudes were now indistinguishable from the Democrats. Imagining being completely safe from physical harm had done what no experiment had done before — it had turned conservatives into liberals.

So if they could just make everyone imagine that actions will have no consequences, they could turn the entire country leftist, and we would live in Utopia forever. Except actions have consequences, and everywhere that has adopted the leftist’s ignorance of future consequences has turned into a total disaster, from the old Soviet Union to Venezuela today. You wonder how people could be so thick, or so blind to how stupid their own research makes them look.

What also kills me with these simpletons is that they have never thought about whether these psychologies might be emerging from conditions of threat or safety as part of a programmed system designed to guide our behavior to maximize survival and reproduction. Where did this response come from? What if these behavioral responses are beneficial?

They also never question why issues of sex and child-rearing would accompany all of the other issues they looked at, why men become feminine in a leftist utopia, or why females become aggressive and masculine. To say nothing of the sexualization of the young.

Of course if they made the jump to “political ideology = reproductive strategy,” a full understanding of the entire issue would be wrapped up in a nice bow for the holidays, but unfortunately, we will have to labor here a little longer.

But perhaps not too long. Bernie Sanders is supposed to be the favored opponent of Donald for 2020, and if ever any candidate begged to be labeled a rabbit by the God Emperor, it is Bernie. Normally Presidential campaigns have been beginning two years before the actual election, so it may not be long now before we are hearing about rabbits and wolves as ideological mascots.

Tell others about r/K Theory, because the people in the field have no idea what they are doing

This entry was posted in Conservatives, K-stimuli, Liberals, Politics, Psychology, r-stimuli, rabbitry. Bookmark the permalink.
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Robert What?
6 years ago

Assuming Trump actually wants to run for re-election.

ACThinker
ACThinker
6 years ago

I wonder how long the effect was for. If the amygdala didn’t shrink, then it was probably good until they went to sleep, or less.

They didn’t convert conservatives to liberals by allowing themselves to imagine the invulnerability. I suspect after a day, they realized “nope, not invulnerable” and switched back to mostly typical conservative principles.

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Reply to  ACThinker
6 years ago

Probably until any stimulus re-activated the amygdala again.

All they had to do was go to any decent non-fake news site and they’d come back to planet Earth quite quickly.

PS: this is pure speculation, I am by no means an expert, it just seems to make sense: get stimulus that reduces amygdala activation -> get liberalized (more like lobotomized, am I right?); get stimulus that activates amygdala > get back to normal.

PSS: imagine the person goes thru the god-mode visualization, and has he leaves the lab he buys a ticket to a lottery and win 6 gorillion shekels and then spends the rest of his life banging an harem of 30 15/10 beauties in a impenetrable mansion guarded by 100 PMCs which also had an underground bunker/military based ready to keep 500 people alive for 200 years and impossible to penetrate by force. That guy would never leave cloud 9.

Now imagine the guy gets out of the lab but instead of that happening he sees some pseudo refugees spreading some kinetic vibrancy around on each other in what seems to be a fight between Iranians and Pakistanis. He would get back to being alert again. Even more so if any of the vibrant inbreeds seemed to suddenly have picked an interest on him and starts gazing at him as he get the hell out of there.

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Reply to  987987998987932879_730YUcj1
6 years ago

My spelling is atrocious. Pardon my engrish, I need some sleep.

Californian
Californian
6 years ago

Reminds me of the time they said you could become more tolerant by having your brain fried by electrodes.

Pitcrew
Pitcrew
6 years ago

Turning conservatives into liberals. They could probably accomplish that with amygdalae reduction. T.Gondi cysts in drinking water or hormone mimickers would be a good start.

They could also do both by pushing cat memes on the internet and lacing everyone’s food with soy and putting BPA in drinking plastics. The powers that be wouldn’t do that would they?

Ron
Ron
6 years ago

so their brilliant strategy to turn everyone leftist involves convincing the population that they have superpowers and can do anything.

Okayyyyyyy.

Kauf Buch
Kauf Buch
6 years ago

Well, I dunno. Do they include, maybe…
…being able to off every Leftist on the street, with no consequences?