A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can
be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and
aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity". As if that
was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four
authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing
talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same
affliction.


All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".


Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report,
Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in
public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and
the National Institutes of Health.


The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who
turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference
for moral certainty and
frequently expressed dislike of nuance.


"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at
premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and
stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.


One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion
to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that
the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its
beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.


The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a
disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is
pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".


Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had
received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that
the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we
talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same
dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group.
Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less
decisive, less committed, less loyal."


But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long
suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors
have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs
and neuroses."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/13/usa.redbox