Politics and Self-Control

Saturday, June 27th, 2015

There is a link between political ideology and the ability to exert self-control:

In a series of three studies with more than 300 participants, the authors found that people who identify as conservative perform better on tests of self-control than those who identify as liberal regardless of race, socioeconomic status and gender.

They also report that participants’ performance on the tests was influenced by how much they believed in the idea of free will, which the researchers define as the belief that a person is largely responsible for his or her own outcomes.

For example, conservatives who are more likely to embrace the idea of free will overwhelmingly agreed with statements like “Strength of mind can always overcome the body’s desires” and “People can overcome any obstacles if they truly want to.”

“Conservatives tend to believe they had a greater control over their outcomes, and that was predicting how they did on the test,” said Joshua Clarkson, a consumer psychologist at the University of Cincinnati and the lead author of the paper.

To screen for self-control, Clarkson and his colleagues relied on the Stroop test that asks participants to look at a list of color words such as “red” or “blue” that are printed in mismatching color fonts. (Picture the word “orange” printed in green letters.) Volunteers were asked to read the words, ignoring the color of the font, which can be challenging.

Comments

  1. Felix says:

    Stroop test score a proxy for “self control”? These “scientists” should leave such equivalence claims to the press release guys.

    Say, here’s another way to measure “self control”: Give the subjects a women’s magazine sort of “How [positive personality trait] are you?” questionnaire. Then assert the equivalence of a low score on the questionnaire and “self control”. Or high score. Either way.

  2. Tim says:

    Here’s an empirical observation you can make yourself through an Internet search that supports the research.

    In the 1990s a group of conservative Christian men held a rally on the Mall in DC. Hundreds of thousands attended. I think it was called Stand in the Gap. The park police said they were the cleanest, most well-behaved crowd they ever had on the Mall.

    Contrast with any gathering of liberals. Obama inauguration, Occupy protests, the recent Portland protesters against Shell, etc. Nothing but trash and debris everywhere.

  3. Graham says:

    Unsurprising results, but the terminology used is interesting:

    1. “the idea of free will, which the researchers define as the belief that a person is largely responsible for his or her own outcomes”; that’s a pretty expansive definition of ‘free will’. We could have all the free will in the world without the ability to overcome obstacles set in our way by nature, other men, or fate. Seeing whether that is the case is life. I can only assume, to whatever extent Americans, even conservatives, agree with this, that this represents the peculiar optimism native to Americans.

    2. Similarly, “Strength of mind can always overcome the body’s desires” and “People can overcome any obstacles if they truly want to.” These are wildly different standards. Overcoming one’s own desires ['the body's desires' is tendentious] is hard, but at least no one else is working against you. It can be done. Overcoming “any obstacles” requires also being smarter and/or stronger than numberless competitors in life and also having the luck to overcome random chance.

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