Conservative Politics, 'Low-Effort' Thinking Linked In New Study

From the Huffington Post:

"People endorse conservative ideology more when they have to give a first or fast response," the study's lead author, University of Arkansas psychologist Dr. Scott Eidelman, said in a written statement released by the university.

Does the finding suggest that conservatives are lazy thinkers?

"Not quite," Dr. Eidelman told The Huffington Post in an email. "Our research shows that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism, not that political conservatives use low-effort thinking."

And

"Keeping people from thinking too much...or just asking them to deliberate or consider information in a cursory manner can impact people's political attitudes, and in a way that consistently promotes political conservatism," Dr. Eidelman said in the email.

More here.

Important distinction: conservatives aren't low-effort thinkers; however, low-effort thinking leads to conservative positions. So, conservatives can be brilliant, and some of them are, but as long as they're not thinking too hard about political issues, such brilliance doesn't matter--it's not being used. That is, and I think this conclusion was already pretty clear before this study, clear to liberals anyway, conservative views are short-sighted and simple. Conservatism just doesn't consider everything that needs to be considered in order to understand the world--I think my meditations on Scalia's dissenting opinion in the Lawrence v Texas case is a nice example of a brilliant conservative being intellectually lazy.

But, like I said, we probably all knew that already.

The crux here is that we currently live in an American culture that downright encourages low-effort thinking. From public schools that "teach to the test" and emphasize discipline and order in a wildly disproportionate way relative to learning, to universities that are slowly eroding studies in the humanities, to mass media, both news and entertainment, that continually serve up 24/7 the most simplistic narratives possible about the world that will keep viewers around for commercials, to moronic politicians who talk to the public like they're five year-olds, nobody involved in the institutions that we collectively call "society" appears to want us to think about things too deeply.

And why would they? People who think about things always complain and bitch and moan. Better to discourage that sort of thing. Better to encourage people to think that Forrest Gump's bland platitudes about boxes of chocolate is enough to navigate life. Better to fill people's heads with notions of a nostalgic fictional past when a simpler America was "better" than today's complex realities. Better to have a nation of sheep because sheep are extraordinarily cooperative when you slaughter them.

America is all about low-effort thinking these days. It is no wonder that the GOP has jumped off a cliff into right-wing psycho land, no wonder that today's Democrats are as conservative as 1990's Republican Party. Death by dullness. This is how the empire ends.

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