Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve

Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve

>> Julian Borger in Washington
>> Wednesday August 13, 2003
>> The Guardian
>>
>> 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."
>>
>>
>> Guardian Unlimited