Social studies covering up leftism vs psychoticism correlations

As was demonstrated by the forced retractions and erratum of some social studies publications on political views versus certain character traits.

Lovely! That's a kind of data obfuscation and "accidental" words reversal in conclusions, to be expected - if the authors themselves are psychotics!

This procedure was uncovered and reported by students (Steven G. Ludeke and Stig H. R. Rasmussen) for a number of publications. Which then lead to a forced retraction and erratum published by the authors. This article on Retraction Watch website describes what happened:

Retraction Watch
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process

Conservative political beliefs not linked to psychotic traits, as study claimed

(thanks Drew Maharaj!)

Quote:

Researchers have fixed a number of papers after mistakenly reporting that people who hold conservative political beliefs are more likely to exhibit traits associated with psychoticism, such as authoritarianism and tough-mindedness.

As one of the notices specifies, now it appears that liberal political beliefs are linked with psychoticism. That paper also swapped ideologies when reporting on people higher in neuroticism and social desirability (falsely claiming that you have socially desirable qualities); the original paper said those traits are linked with liberal beliefs, but they are more common among people with conservative values.

I would like to point out a theory (originally proposed by Stan P. aka "Dozent") and some of my articles linking collectivism with the atavistic fall-back to a hierarchical primate heard society, see here.
and here

Specifically:

Lack of social skills made us human

Scientists find liberal gene

and

Human regression, anthropology

Quote:

"Nomadic" (Homo Sapiens)	"Boomers" (Simian Sapiens)
outwardly - individualists, inwardly - co-operative	outwardly - collectivists, inwardly - aggressive and competitive
introvert	extrovert
disobedient	followers
adaptive, flexible	static, rigid
racially blind	intolerant of strangers
value creativity	afraid of new
dislike static order	value stability
rely on individual work	work unconnected to wealth
authorities = problems	authorities = source of wealth
strong team bonds	strong social group bonds
manipulate environment	manipulate people
technical and science skills	lack of technical abilities
logic and math	verbal reasoning and rhetorics
observe what works	observe what others say
individual survival priority	group has priority
idealizes religions	uses religions
support commerce	consider it unfair profiteering
nomadic mentality	settled mentality
highly focused on 1 task	multitasker
"What I produce belongs to me"	"What you produce belongs to us"

Last but not least, I recommend Susan Cain's book "Quiet..." on introvertism: where she describes some characters of people that would traditionally be associated with individualism (as opposed to collectivism). See also this.

Heretic

Banned TED talks

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You may enjoy it, well worth listening to:

Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs"

Graham Hancock - The War on Consciousness

The Science Delusion - Rupert Sheldrake 

There is no such thing as too much heresy!

Stan (Heretic)

Lack of social skills made us human

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[Part 2 of 2]

Continuing on Sapolsky's lecture, see this video:


Robert Sapolsky: Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences

About 50 minutes into this lecture, Sapolsky changes slightly the subject and describes his stress research on baboon monkeys in Africa, describing their society's structure and detailed habits. This was discussed in the context of biochemistry and stress hormones (glucocorticoids), with blood samples taken and analyzed, correlated within the context of the social interaction. Over 20 years of solid experimental and observational research, really impressive piece of work!

Brief summary.

Baboons in the reserve (Serengeti) need only about 3 hours a day to gather their food. They live in baboons' paradise, their health is good and infant's mortality is lower than among neighboring human villages. They spend the rest of the day, 9 hours every day on average making each other miserable and stressing each other to the limits of their adrenal biochemistry, using social interplay, emotional and physical harassment. They follow a very elaborate and rigid social hierarchy with a strong male gang leader and a score of lesser levels. At each position within the gang, a member is continuously subjected to harassment and being picked on by higher member, while at the same time, they are compelled by their biology to release their own stress by picking, incessantly upon the weaker members of lesser position.

I strongly recommend to watch this video to give you a better idea what it is really like. I have to admit I couldn't help by noticing how similar is their structure to the structure of the human subculture in:

- criminal gangs
- government institutions,
- large corporations
- armed forces and paramilitary organizations,
- large religious institutions
- academic institutions

Comments and thoughts

If one ever wondered about any of the above cultures, then watching Sapolsky's video will neatly illustrate what is that all about. In contrast, one wonders what kind of culture would rather protects the weaker members and work creatively to build tools, shelters and grow food rather then spend all their time on social warfare? I think, it can't possibly be a culture solely focused on social interplay, with a rigid hierarchical structure. I think the pattern is the same, regardless whether we are dealing with intelligent humans or monkeys. The main dichotomy is I think clear: a group either focuses most of their free time on perfecting the social interaction and learning practical social manipulation skills to the detriment of other skills, or it follows a decentralized model allowing their members to develop and use individual skills in creating technology, art and science (individuals being free to keep the results of their work!). This dichotomy can be seen in both individual characters and on the scale of the herds, tribes, societies or countries. This dichotomy is expressed in two different approaches towards problem-solving. For example, take a lack of something like food: one approach is to steal food from others. The second approach is to search or grow more food - to fix the actual problem! Another example that we keep hearing so often is energy and resources' shortage. The "monkey" way would be for Mr. Leader to make me and you use less energy, while conserving what is left for his elite friends and his electorate. The other less fashionable but natural human way is to use technology to tap into a source of energy that is thousands of time more abundant than oil or coal. One mindset is about controlling the people; the other is about controlling the environment.

Coming back to the title of this note: I think there is a snowball-in-hell chance that any society behaving along the pattern described in Sapolsky's lecture on baboons, would ever develop technology, art or science. It is also doubtful, if they ever managed to capture the fruit of modern civilization by force, that they would be able to keep and maintain those achievements!

The fact that humans did achieve a highly developed technological civilization means that the periods of herd-like rigid hierarchical social structures must have been a rare anomaly rather than the rule! Otherwise we probably would never evolve creative skills and would be living today in a tropical "paradise" living off wild fruit and spending our time plotting how to became "herd-managers".

No it is not the society and the social skills that made us human, it was the lack of it! Those who spend their time partying and socializing create no wealth and no value. Those who tinker, build, experiment and learn science - do! It was the "nerddom" that drove us forward while social skills held us backwards towards social competition, stress, warfare and death.

[see also Dozent's comment underneath]

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(Style and grammar edited 7/02/2011)
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Scientists Find Liberal Gene?

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UCSD Paper:
Friendships Moderate an Association Between the DRD4 Gene and Political Ideology
by Jaime E. Settle [jsettle at ucsd.edu], Christopher T. Dawes, Nicholas A. Christakis, James H. Fowler

Quotations:

"It is the crucial interaction of two factors - the genetic
predisposition and the environmental condition of having many friends
in adolescence - that is associated with being more liberal,”
according to the study.
...

Here, we link our understanding of the genetic basis of political ideology with
environmental factors known to influence political attitudes. We suggest that individuals with the 7R allele of the DRD4 gene, given certain environmental stimuli, are more likely to have a liberal ideology.

...
The 7R allele of the DRD4 gene is known to be associated with several haracteristics, such as increased extraversion, novelty-seeking, and sensation-seeking (Eichhammer et al. 2005).
...

In a landmark piece synthesizing five decades of research on conservatism and social-cognitive motives, Jost et al. (2003) assert a motivational basis for the stable, definitional core of conservative ideology, claiming that conservative ideologies are adopted in part to satisfy a variety of social, cognitive, and psychological needs. The authors write that people’s response to threatening environmental stimuli, such as fear and uncertainty, affects the development and expression of political beliefs concerning the core components of conservative ideology, such as resistance to change and acceptance of inequality (p. 366).

We would expect to find a negative correlation between traits associated with DRD4-7R and a conservative ideology if conservatives perceive new experiences as a threat and thus, to satisfy their psychological needs, they avoid novelty and sensation seeking. This has been demonstrated in the literature with sensation seeking (Kish and Donnenwerth 1972, Kish 1973), a taste for broad-mindedness (Feather 1979, Feather 1984), and openness to experience (Pratto et al. 1994, Jost and Thompson 2000, Peterson et al. 1997, Peterson and Lane 2001).
...

Novelty-seeking should not necessarily lead one to make more friends - those high in the 7R allele often exhibit certain asocial behaviors. Rather, the influence of a large number of friends could serve to develop social cognition (Staub 1995), create a better understanding of other’s needs (Niebrzydowski 1995) and greater consideration in regard to the society in which they live (Selman 1990, White et al. 1987), as well as increase expression of prosocial behaviors (Hartup 1993).
...
It is the combination of the desire for new experience and many different pathways to these experiences that we hypothesize has an impact on political ideology.

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(See also this article.)

I find it fascinating that a dychotomy between different types of characters comes out even through genetics!  It makes me think that a difference between the two classes of population goes deeper than just "liberal" and "conservative" views in the political sense. The authors identify the liberal view as the one associated with openess, curiosity and a willingness to embrace new experience, where as the conservative is described as perceiving new experiences as threats, thus, to satisfy their psychological needs, they avoid novelty and sensation-seeking, and tend to "accept inequality" - meaning acceptance of the class hierarchy and the authority I presume.

This is not quite the way I see it, based on my experience. Since I grew up in a communist state before moving to the West, I have noticed an awful lot of Western "Liberals" (in the American sense of this word) exhibiting anything but curiosity and openess, while some of the poster "boys" and "girls" of  Conservatism ("Neocons" as they are being fondly nicknamed), seem to have been more open to new ideas or willing to "rock the boat".


I think a more accurate way of political labelling is to use the European meaning for "Liberalism" = pro individual freedom. In the US language it would be called "Libertarianism". European Liberals have always been unafraid and willing to entertain new ideas while the European "Conservatives" were those interested in preserving the power of the oligarchies and their institutions thus any new ideas were generally regarded as harmful.  On the other hand, in the North America, the Conervatives seem to consist of an unworkable - "unholy" mixture of the European style Conservatives and Libertarians.

I see a much more fundamental split in the present society, along the lines of "open and individualistic" versus "closed and hierarchical" that fits the above described model better than the political divide. I wrote about that in the following posts:

Human regression, anthropology

Baby boomers' monkey business 

It is not just as much about socializing and having many friends versus being a recluse - it all probably depends whom you have to deal with! If one is mostly surrounded by the members of a not-ones-own types then obviously, that person isn't going to spent as much time socializing, as he/she would have liked. Each type is as sociable as the other one but on their own terms!  They probably perceive (mutually) any social or societal/civic/business activities of the other kind as boring, unnatural, fake or criminal.  I know I do!

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Why does Canadian gov...

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... steal less?  Less than other governments! Hope you will enjoy this refreshing point of view, and appologies for straying away from the main blog topics.  (feel free to click that box on the right, it's OK.  8-:) )

This discussion begun with Gavin Hewitt's BBC article

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Stan "Dozent" P. wrote:

You were right, the British papers are much more interesting and honest then North American, BUT...

Quote:

"That is one of the key conclusions of the paper. Since adopting the euro Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain have become increasingly uncompetitive. That and the slowdown in productivity is the heart of the crisis in the eurozone, rather than debt. Debt is a symptom."

No, It is not, pure and simple. Uncompetitiveness is a symptom. Debt is the result of the disease. The Euro is a facilitator, not the root cause. The cause of the cancer is rooted deeper, much deeper. It is true that without the conversion to Euro the massive theft ( or misallocation of capital  8-)  ) in Greece and Ireland would not have happened.  But a similar story has happened in USA and it is hard to blame it on adopting a dollar. Iceland is in the worse situation then Greece or Ireland yet it does NOT use the Euro! One can not blame it on the Mediterranean culture either. Iceland is a country of tough, hard working people yet it is screwed up just as well.

The root cause is that western elites and governments are indolent and corrupt to the bone. Give the mouse a piece of cheese, he will ask for a glass of milk.

20 years ago Argentina and Brasil went bankrupt. Their liabilities were about 100 Billion. Their popolation 100 million Who the heck lent 120 Billion to Iceland, a country of 300,000 people? Who lent 600 billion to Ireland, the country of 3 million? Greeks did what Bernie Madoff would do if he was a state! Cheated, falsified numbers, and paid bills with new phony money. Who the heck packaged all these Alabama Ninja mortgages into "AAA" securities. Who sold this crap to Icelandic banks? Where did they got the money to pay for it? When you look at it closely, Iceland was used to launder money and they got a commission for doing it.

The establishment, the governments and their paid journalists will invent one reason after another why this crisis happened and continues.  This will change nothing Thanks God our Canadian Prime Minister took a bribe of $300,000.  He thought it is BIG MONEY.  Thanks God another Prime Minister got involved in his friend Golf Course.  It cost taxpayers 0.5 million.  Thanks to these crooks, our government was paralyzed for 20 years and missed the greatest thieving opportunity of their lives.  Thank to them, we can calmly wait until this economic bomb explodes SOMEWHERE ELSE.  Explode it will! A few hundred crooks cannot stop 6 billion people who want to live decent lives.  Someone, somewhere, sometimes will default on their "obligations" and this whole house of cards will fall apart.

Stan P.

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