Psychology Today

April 2, 2007 By Fausta

Psychology Today, the AIPAC prosecution, and other items

Remember the Psychology Today article on the Ideological Animal? Well, Cinnamon Stillwell tells us that Psy Today published my friend Asher Abrams‘s open letter (emphasis added)

I’m curious, though, to know what it is exactly that your article is trying to establish. Because it looks as if you’re trying very hard to find psychological, i.e. non-rational, explanations for cases where people adopt “conservative” political beliefs. There’s no acknowledgment that such a political shift could come about as the result of a rational assessment of the relevant facts and arguments; nor, conversely, is there any discussion of fear-related psychology on the political left (dire warnings about global warming and the ever-impending American police state spring to mind). And instead of encouraging people to inform themselves on political issues while listening with an open mind to different points of view, your article prescribes the simple expedient of “reminding ourselves to think rationally”, as if the fear itself, rather than its objective cause, were the real problem.

In fact, in an entire article devoted to what you call the “9/11 effect”, there is not a single direct reference to the terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans.

In this light, it’s difficult for me to escape the conclusion that your article is ideologically driven. The agenda seems to be to encourage readers to dismiss precisely those fears which, in your analysis, lead to conservative politics. In short, you want to “cure” people of being conservative.

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While Sandy Berger walks free, two two former AIPAC officials are prosecuted for receiving classified information under the Espionage Act: First They Came for the Jews
A prosecution under the Espionage Act threatens the First Amendment.

What chance the defendants–who asked no one for classified information–have of acquittal and the avoidance of prison remains to be seen. Though Judge T. S. Ellis rejected defense motions to dismiss the charges on constitutional grounds, his early rulings have so far shown a keen appreciation of the meaning this case. In this he stands in sharp contrast to the nation’s leading civil rights guardians, these days busy filing lawsuits against the government and fulminating on behalf of the rights of captured terrorists in Guantanamo and elsewhere, while accusing the U.S. of failing to provide open trials and assurances that the accused have the right to view the evidence against them. As of this day neither the ACLU nor the Center for Constitutional Rights has shown the smallest interest in this prosecution so bound up with First Amendment implications. Nor has most of the media, whose daily work includes receiving “leaks” from government officials far more damaging to national security than anything alleged in this case. In this as in the Scooter Libby matter, the desire to see Bush Administration officials nailed apparently counts for more than First Amendment principle.

Powerline has more.

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Little Miss Attila posts on Fred Thompson – Robert Novak has more.
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When the money runs out. Not that the Dems give a damn. (h/t Larwyn)
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Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs

Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans’ fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it’s high time for a new bout of re-education.

(h/t Irwin)

January 21, 2007 By Fausta

Neo-neocon posts about the psychology of Psychology Today

Earlier this week I posted on Psy Today’s Ideological Animal from the point of view of whether the article addresses if there is a real threat (which it doesn’t) and how fear, in my experience, didn’t provoke my change.

Neo-neocon, one of the people who were interviewed for the article, posted about it yesterday.

Neo-neocon:

I’ll start by disclosing my personal association with the article. Back in July, I got an email from an intern at the magazine, inviting me to be interviewed for a piece on political conversions. According to the email, the article was be entirely even-handed and nonpartisan, and would incorporate stories from both sides of the political spectrum about people whose viewpoints had changed. It sounded like fun, and definitely right up my alley.

But if you read the finished product, it turns out that the “change” stories have boiled down to just one, that of journalist and blogger Cinnamon Stillwell, plus four short and superficial blurbs containing a couple of sentences apiece about four famous “changers” (yes, this part was an attempt at even-handedness, at least by the numbers: there were two righty-to-lefties and two lefty-to-righties: Brock, Huffington, Reagan, and Hitchens).

During my rather lengthy telephone interview with author Jay Dixit, he asked me many times whether my post-9/11 political change had been motivated by fear. I repeatedly explained that it had not, referring to my blog articles on change, and describing the process involved in some detail.

You mist read the rest. Among the very important issues in this study is the complete lack of science involved: IronShrink, a Volokh commenter, and G. Richard Jansen explain in detal.

As I mentioned to Neo-neocon, to have this article try to pass itself off as related/pertaining to a “scientific” study of any sort is absurd. Back in the year dot when I was in college (double major: economics and marketing) I had to collect, quantify, and explain in mathematical terms how I analyzed my data – and economics is a social science. Incidentally, a commenter at Neo’s managed to squeeze in a taunt at me for making that remark; when a person who disagrees with a “conservative” has no substantial argument, the personal attack serves as a release, I guess. For some, it’s all about feelings, and how valid it is to express them, but I digress.

The “study” is a series of observations custom-cut to fit a preordained outcome. To even talk about that study in scientific terms is like referring to the Grimm brothers tales as history.

However, this “study” is only one instance where “science” isn’t science. Read Neo-neocon’s commenter Sergei’s post, Mathematics as a tool of deception and self-deception. As Sergei commented at Neo’s post,

Psychology is not the only domain where junk science thrives; any other field where exact knowlege is still impossible or never will be possible, became a playground of pseudo-scientific speculations. But there is one all-important factor, beside immaturity of field, which foster pseudo-science: this is politization. After some problem became a hot potato in political or ideological clashes, any chance of objective, impartial study is irrevocably lost. In my memory this calamity has spoiled racial anthropology, eugenics, climatology, gender studies, many fields in history and brain research.

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Last night I watched Smoke Screen: Hezbollah Inside America. I’ll try to find out when it’s going to air again – this is a must-see.
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Dan Riehl‘s going to appear today at 10AM in CNN’s Reliable Sources

Update Via LGF,

Marg … inalized Stark: He Don’t Beat Down, He Beats …

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This week’s Carnival of the Insanities is ready and waiting for you,

January 17, 2007 By Fausta

Psy Today’s Ideological Animal

Cinnamon Stillwell and the liberal hawks (see sidebar) have been discussing an article in Psychology Today titled The Ideological Animal. According to the article,

Liberals are messier than conservatives, their rooms have more clutter and more color, and they tend to have more travel documents, maps of other countries, and flags from around the world. Conservatives are neater, and their rooms are cleaner, better organized, more brightly lit, and more conventional. Liberals have more books, and their books cover a greater variety of topics. And that’s just a start. Multiple studies find that liberals are more optimistic. Conservatives are more likely to be religious. Liberals are more likely to like classical music and jazz, conservatives, country music. Liberals are more likely to enjoy abstract art. Conservative men are more likely than liberal men to prefer conventional forms of entertainment like TV and talk radio. Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men. Liberal women are more likely than conservative women to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments.

While my house is well-lit, and I keep a clean and mostly uncluttered house, I fit their notion of a liberal because I

own a couple of hundred books in a wide range of topics (after I got rid of three large bookshelves’ worth)

am an optimist

am not particularly religious

enjoy abstract art and am a member of the MoMA

like good poetry

play the piano (badly, but I play it)

The same thing applies to their notions of what liberal children were like

As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient.

(Michelle Malkin shredded that early childhood study to bits last year.)

Indeed, I was a liberal once. So the article was a little correct. Where the article errs is in assuming that all people who left modern Liberalism did it only out of fear, and that “thinking rationally” would prevent political shifting. In my case, as it was with Cinnamon and with Neo-Neocon (who was interviewed for the article but the interview was never used), it was a long process that led to changing my political stance. The war on Islamofascism is only part of that picture.

I didn’t get up one morning and went “Bam! I’m not a liberal!” as if I were throwing away a pair of old sneakers or changing my lipstick color. My change started during the Clinton administration, watching how Yasser Arafat was the Clinton’s preferred guest. It was a process that took years. Someday I’ll post about that.

Cinnamon finds that

Finally, the article’s closing paragraph indicating that if one is simply encouraged to “think rationally” none of this political shifting (presumably to the right) would be required, is not only silly, but insulting. It was just such rational thinking that led me to reject the left and embrace those (most of whom, it turned out, were on the right) that fully understood the dangers of Islamic fascism. If it’s irrational to want to fight against the great totalitarian threat of our day, then count me in.

Another issue that came up is the question of evil: in the liberal hawks discussion Pamela pointed out that the Left hates to think of evil. I am not a psychiatrist and certainly have no intention of becoming one, but I know for sure that not being able to discern between good and evil is the mark of a deranged mind.

ShrinkWrapped, in one of his characteristically thoughtful posts, asserts that

Those who are pathologizing Neo-cons believe that at best we are over reacting to a minor threat and at worst are creating the threat out of minimal evidence.

As ShrinkWrapped explains in the Sanity Squad podcast, if they are not addressing if there is a real threat or not, the article ends up being nonsense.

Which takes me to Dr. Sanity’s post on the crux of the issue:

Did Islamic fascists plan and execute the mass murder of 9/11 ; or, was it a conspiracy of the Bush Administration and the US government (and/or the Jews)?

Have Islamic fascists declared war on the U.S. and the West; or, are their statements–made on a daily basis– simply mere rhetoric and in reality pose little or no threat to our national security?

Are we involved in a global war against Islamic fascism that is being waged right now (in Europe, the Middle East, Russia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Indonesia, the Phillipines etc.) against the fanatic religionists of Islam ; or is this “war” a psychotic figment of neocons’ imaginations?

Are Islamic fascists (both nationed and nationless) threatening to obtain nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and do they intend to use them against their declared enemies (America, the West, and Israel) ; or, is their intent merely peaceful energy production for the betterment of their own populations?

Is violent Islamic fascism responsible for thousands of innocents murdered in depraved and cowardly acts of terror and violence all over the world; or is all this so-called “terror” simply a perfectly justified response to the aggressive and hostile policies of the U.S. and the West toward the oppressed peoples of Islam — whose only recourse is to mount suicide attacks against their oppressors?

Are these Islamic nations deliberately fostering and nurturing a malignant and violent version of Islam in order to keep their own populations under control and direct that population’s anger and rage externally toward the West and Israel; or, is this entire issue of “Islamic fascism” a clever plot concocted by oil companies, the US government, and political conservatives (i.e., neocons), to steal oil and oppress the people of Islam while advancing American imperialism and hegemony in the Middle East?

As Siggy says in the podcast, rational people made a choice.

I know I’ve made mine.

Update, Thursday January 18: Dissecting Leftism posts on the study (also at Stop the ACLU.
Round-up at Kesher Talk
IronShrink examines the study (h/t: Michelle Malkin)
A Quick “Sanity” Quiz!

Update, Sunday, 21 January Follow-up post: Neo-neocon posts about the psychology of Psychology Today

Update, Wednesday 24 January: The Left Behind Series (or, Why is the Left so Intellectually and Spiritually Behind?)