The science of how liberals differ from conservatives
Chris Mooney has presented "seven recent scientific studies showing that liberals and conservatives differ in ways that go far beyond their philosophies or views on politics. We're talking about things like physiological responses when shown different kinds of words or images, and performance in neuroscience tests." I applaud these efforts. I hope we will see many more studies to come, and that they will shed substantial additional light on why liberals and conservatives see the world so differently. Mooney aptly sums up the promise of this scientific effort:
[T]he next time a Republican denies global warming, liberals ought to be better able to check the impulse to say "what an idiot!" and instead say something like, "I can understand why they have that kind of a response."Amen to that, based on the long sad track record of what happens when one group of people barks that out group members are "idiots." We've been intensely doing that for at least the past decade, and that strategy only gets us increasingly pissed off at each other. It doesn't lead to any fruitful understanding. It doesn't allow us to work with each other to achieve the many common goals we can agree on. Here is an earlier post I had written on this topic of applying science to understand differences between conservatives and liberals, concerning a study by Jay Dixit, Frank Sulloway et al.