Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - IQ and Politics - Do lower income, lower IQ voters, Elect our Leaders?

host · 11-04-2006, 11:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

.....the discursive framework is pretty tight, and thinking about it strips alot of the interest out of reading most conservative responses to issues simply because you can pretty much derive them before anyone says anything.

those which are initially a surprise can be generally explained by looking at adjustments made by the media apparatus.

i dont think the appeal of conservative discourse is a function of people being stupid. i think it is something else--maybe a response to globalizing capitalism in a way--shifting to the frames of the nation and of the will is a way to enable folk to imagine that the categories that enable them to locate themselves socially still function, even though they are being eroded by the reorganization of capitalism.

maybe to some extent you could map one way of thinking about this onto the other, and conclude that folk who are in the most exposed class position are the most likely to avail themselves of a discourse that enables them to deny what is obviously the case--that the organization of the economic model they rely on to eat (say) is changing and that they are or will soon become the second great canary in the mineshaft insofar as consequences are concerned.

this would line up contemporary american conservatism with a long tradition of radical nationalist ideologies that speak to the sense of being-exposed of the petit bourgeois in part by enabling them to cope via denial, by retreating into a fantasy of a pure nation that has somehow or another been betrayed or is under some Threat from a curiously amorphous Enemy.

if this study speaks to anything for me at least, it is an index of the extent to which one of the features of contemporary america that really freaks me out (and i use this term with some rigor): that the system of social reproduction has not been able to catch up to changes in the labor market at all, and that it continues to produce and reproduce an outmoded labor pool. this would be a direct reflection of the rigid class structure of american public education--a subject about which the right has nothing coherent to say, really--all they have ever proposed is a system that would privatize class stratification in order to erase the problem as political......

The ideas and research that I'm posting on this thread, may not be that far apart from what I think that you were getting at in your last post, rb.

We perceive that our political system, economic system, and our US society is out of whack, i.e., behaving irrationally, compared to our individual POV:

This seems to be an obvious symptom, but to what degree am I handicapped by it, as well?:

Quote:

http://tip.psychology.org/festinge.html
.....Scope/Application:

Dissonance theory applies to all situations involving attitude formation and change. It is especially relevant to decision-making and problem-solving.

Example:

Consider someone who buys an expensive car but discovers that it is not comfortable on long drives. Dissonance exists between their beliefs that they have bought a good car and that a good car should be comfortable. Dissonance could be eliminated by deciding that it does not matter since the car is mainly used for short trips (reducing the importance of the dissonant belief) or focusing on the cars strengths such as safety, appearance, handling (thereby adding more consonant beliefs). The dissonance could also be eliminated by getting rid of the car, but this behavior is a lot harder to achieve than changing beliefs.

Principles:

1. Dissonance results when an individual must choose between attitudes and behaviors that are contradictory.

2. Dissonance can be eliminated by reducing the importance of the conflicting beliefs, acquiring new beliefs that change the balance, or removing the conflicting attitude or behavior.

Quote:

http://conjecturesandrefutations.net/weblog/?p=44
Speaking of Cognitive Dissonance
by Matt McIntosh

This is just too funny not to point out. Amanda Schaffer sets out to attack Evolutionary PsychologyTM (in what is more or less a rehash of David Buller’s criticisms); she reveals her motivation by attacking EP on the grounds that it allegedly supports sexist conclusions. But in the process, she inadvertantly backs into a position that I don’t think she really considered the consequences of:

<b>New research suggests that evolutionary change can occur much faster than was previously believed.</b> Natural selection is thought to effect rapid change especially when a species’ environment is in flux—precisely the situation in the last 10,000 years as humans learned to farm, domesticate animals, and live in larger communal groups.

What’s so odd and amusing about this? Well, the fact that in her zeal to fight what she percieves as sexist pseudo-science, she stumbles into agreement with paleocon extraordinaire and mister Human Biodiversity himself, Steve Sailer, of all people:

Evolutionary Psychology™ has a quasi-Creationist tendency to assume that human evolution miraculously came to an end with the invention of agriculture. In truth, it probably sped up at that point as conditions leading to survival or death changed radically. <b>To take one obvious example, people whose recent ancestors didn’t know how to make alcohol, such as Eskimos, most American Indians, and Australian aborigines, have a much harder time dealing with alcohol today than do people descended from a long line of imbibing Eurasian farmers.</b> And among those, Mediterranean peoples such as Italians and Jews are much less likely to be ravaged by alcoholism than are Northern Europeans who didn’t have access to wine until recently.

For those unfamiliar with the debate, Sailer has often been reviled as a racist for pointing out that it’s very likely that evolution has led geographically dispersed populations to evolve apart over the last 10,000 years, not only causing them to have physical differences but also mental ones. Speaking of which, we now hit the other plank of Schaffer’s accidental agreement with Sailer:

[T]he central, underlying assumption of EP—that humans have hundreds or thousands of mental problem-solving organs produced by natural selection—is questionable. Many cognitive scientists believe that such modules exist for processing sensory information and for acquiring language. It does not follow, however, that there are a plethora of other ones specifically designed for tasks like detecting cheaters. In fact, considering how much dramatic change our forebears faced, it makes more sense that their problem-solving faculties would have evolved to be flexible in response to their immediate surroundings. … Indeed, our mental flexibility, or cortical plasticity, may be evolution’s greatest gift....

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200503110..._10_21_04.html
<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050305140429/www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/Report10_21_04.pdf">The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters - October 21, 2004</a>

Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Had WMD or Major Program,
Supported al Qaeda

Agree with Kerry Supporters Bush Administration Still Saying This is the Case

Agree US Should Not Have Gone to War if No WMD or Support for al Qaeda

Bush Supporters Misperceive World Public as Not Opposed to Iraq War,
Favoring Bush Reelection

Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.

Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters have exactly opposite perceptions.

These are some of the findings of a new study of the differing perceptions of Bush and Kerry supporters, conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, based on polls conducted in September and October.

Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments, "One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them. Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and Kerry supporters agree." Eighty-two percent of Bush supporters perceive the Bush administration as saying that Iraq had WMD (63%) or that Iraq had a major WMD program (19%). Likewise, 75% say that the Bush administration is saying Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. Equally large majorities of Kerry supporters hear the Bush administration expressing these views--73% say the Bush administration is saying Iraq had WMD (11% a major program) and 74% that Iraq was substantially supporting al Qaeda.

Steven Kull adds, "Another reason that Bush supporters may hold to these beliefs is that they have not accepted the idea that it does not matter whether Iraq had WMD or supported al Qaeda. Here too they are in agreement with Kerry supporters." Asked whether the US should have gone to war with Iraq if US intelligence had concluded that Iraq was not making WMD or providing support to al Qaeda, 58% of Bush supporters said the US should not have, and 61% assume that in this case the President would not have. Kull continues, "To support the president and to accept that he took the US to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance, and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about prewar Iraq."

<< RESUME READING >>

This tendency of Bush supporters to ignore dissonant information extends to other realms as well. Despite an abundance of evidence--including polls conducted by Gallup International in 38 countries, and more recently by a consortium of leading newspapers in 10 major countries--only 31% of Bush supporters recognize that the majority of people in the world oppose the US having gone to war with Iraq. Forty-two percent assume that views are evenly divided, and 26% assume that the majority approves. Among Kerry supporters, 74% assume that the majority of the world is opposed.

Similarly, 57% of Bush supporters assume that the majority of people in the world would favor Bush's reelection; 33% assumed that views are evenly divided and only 9% assumed that Kerry would be preferred. A recent poll by GlobeScan and PIPA of 35 of the major countries around the world found that in 30, a majority or plurality favored Kerry, while in just 3 Bush was favored. On average, Kerry was preferred more than two to one.

Bush supporters also have numerous misperceptions about Bush's international policy positions. Majorities incorrectly assume that Bush supports multilateral approaches to various international issues--the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the treaty banning land mines (72%)--and for addressing the problem of global warming: 51% incorrectly assume he favors US participation in the Kyoto treaty. After he denounced the International Criminal Court in the debates, the perception that he favored it dropped from 66%, but still 53% continue to believe that he favors it. An overwhelming 74% incorrectly assumes that he favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements. In all these cases, majorities of Bush supporters favor the positions they impute to Bush. Kerry supporters are much more accurate in their perceptions of his positions on these issues.

"The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information," according to Steven Kull, "very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters."

The polls were conducted October 12-18 and September 3-7 and 8-12 with samples of 968, 798 and 959 respondents, respectively. Margins of error were 3.2 to 4% in the first and third surveys and 3.5% on September 3-7. The poll was fielded by Knowledge Networks using its nationwide panel, which is randomly selected from the entire adult population and subsequently provided internet access. For more information about this methodology, go to www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp.

Indeed....<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=110290">a new thread</a> that I started on this forum. less than 24 hours ago, has links to two new Bush administration disinformation stories anout WMD, fully two years after the preceding quotebox of the PIPA survey......they've been doing this, over and over....for five full years since 9/11, and variants of it....since the late 90's to install Bush as POTUS, in the first place. All along, the "faithful" have fallen away....but support ("belief"), seems suspended for about a year, within five percentage points of the current level.

It seems ominous that support for Bush and congressional republicans remains so high....more than half the US military KIA in Iraq have been since the PIPA survey was published in Oct., 2004...