Conservatives Vs. Liberals: The Personality of Politics

I read an interesting article the other day Scientific American online. It was entitled Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings and written by Jordan Lite. If you're interested in reading it, you can find it at: www.sciam.com/article.cfm. For those who haven't read it, it discusses a found correlation between various personality traits and conservative and liberal viewpoints, and debates the accuracy of such science.

One of the studies that elicited these results was performed by Sam Gosling, a psychology professor at University of Texas in Austin, and Dana Carney, a professor at Columbia Business School. The study involved giving surveys to and inspecting the rooms of 170 people, slightly less than half being college students, the rest being a variety of professionals. From the room inspection, Carney and Gosling gleaned that liberals are, on the whole, messier than conservatives.

They also noticed interesting trends insofaras what people had in their bedrooms or offices, finding that liberals "tend to be colorful and awash in books about travel, ethnicity, feminism and music, along with music CDs covering folk, classic and modern rock, as well as art supplies, movie tickets and travel memorabilia," [Lite, 1] while conservatives "tend to surround themselves with calendars, postage stamps, laundry baskets, irons and sewing materials in their personal spaces, according to the study. Their bedrooms and offices are well-lighted and decorated with sports paraphernalia and flags-especially American ones" [Lite, 1]. Carney and Gosling went on to conclude that such results are indicative of liberals' tendencies toward intellectualism and their predilection for ambiguity, whereas conservatives find comfort in order and predictability.

Another such study discussed by the article appeared in the October 2006 issue of Journal of Research in Personality (www.sciencedirect.com/science). The article, "Nursery School Personality and Political Orientation Two Decades Later", describes a study in which researches studied personality apsects of preschool children then followed up on them in the future, in hopes of finding a discernible correlation between their pre-political personalities and their eventual political beliefs. They did, in fact, find a correlation: "Preschool children who 20 years later were relatively liberal were characterized as: developing close relationships, self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, relatively under-controlled, and resilient. Preschool children subsequently relatively conservative at age 23 were described as: feeling easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable " (Block, Jack and Jeanne H.) These are not the most flattering comparisons for conservatives. The article does mention the tendency toward bias in such studies. Many researchers and professors are liberal, which can lead to an unintentional liberal leaning when performing studies.

The article also mentions that these various findings relate to the personality traits found in The Big 5 Inventory, a personality test that determines where people lie on a scale of various traits: conscientiousness (how inclined toward order and planning or disorganized and haphazard one is), openness to experience (how curious and imaginative or conventional one is), extraversion (how sociable or shy one is), agreeableness (how compassionate and forgiving or irritable one is), and neuroticism (how emotionally stable or moody and anxious one is). Conscientousness and Openness, especially, are supposedly indicative of political beliefs. Liberals are known for scoring higher on openness, while conservatives are found to score higher on conscientousness.

Personally, I haven't come to any concrete conclusions after reading this article. While I do believe that personality is a big part of politics, especially for those who are very politically active, I don't know about the associations that have been made. The original study seems to be too small to give any real information, there's always potential for bias, and in discussing this article with people I know, I heard plenty of personal dissent--"I'm liberal and I'm really organized!" etc. What I want to do now is an informal survey of everyone who reads my article. I invite all of you to take the Big 5 Inventory (www.outofservice.com/bigfive/) and comment on your results. Include your political leanings, the state of your room or office, what kind of things you have in it, etc. Let me know whether you agree or disagree with the findings in politcal science article, and what information you have to back it up. I would love to hear from all of you, so please, read and comment! Maybe we can come confirm or deny these studies with our own little survey and study.