Liberals, authoritarianism, psychoticism – and fake news

Sun, 11 Dec 2016
3 min read
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Why It Took Social Science Years to Correct a Simple Error About 'Psychoticism'

Liberals are not as psychotic and authoritarian as conservative fake news sites would have you believe.

I was reading Gabriel’s blog, which had this story on how “Study from 2012 now corrected to show liberals, not conservatives, more authoritarian”.

With the current furore over fake news – and with the story itself looking somewhat dubious – I thought I’d dig a bit deeper.

First, I found the actual paper in question. I also found the erratum that had been published.

Then, I found this page which had a link to “Why It Took Social Science Years to Correct a Simple Error About ‘Psychoticism'”.

The story provides both background and backstory to how the error was made and how the correction came about.

(As an aside, it also demonstrates how the scientific community is not immune to drama, intrigue and confirmation bias, too.)

More importantly, it explains what psychoticism means:

…psychoticism, in this case, doesn’t mean psychotic in the everyday sense of the word…. Psychoticism…is a cluster of concepts related to people’s level of individuality and penchant for falling in line — it’s measured using questions like “Do you prefer to go your own way rather than act by the rules?” Being high in psychoticism means you have less respect for rules and for order in general — it doesn’t mean you are psychotic or otherwise mentally ill. (my emphasis)

I was still curious about the authoritarian bit, though, as the story made no mention of the term.

So I went to do a bit of reading and this is what I’ve found from Professor Glenn Wilson’s lecture on “The Psychology of Politics”:

  1. Adorno et al (1950) list a number of characteristics that typify an authoritarian person, which include:
    • Tendencies toward militarism;
    • Strict morality;
    • Ethnocentrism;
    • Rigid conventionality; and
    • Blind obedience to higher authority combined with a vindictive attitude toward weaker individuals.

  2. While

    Adorno et al assume that authoritarianism was an exclusively right-wing characteristic…H. J. Eysenck (also a German refugee) reckoned that there was an equivalent authoritarianism of the left. Eysenck (1954) used factor analysis to reveal two independent dimensions of political attitudes that he called radicalism (R) and toughmindedness (T). R was basically the left-right dimension, while T was a kind of totalitarianism shared by Marxists and Fascists. Subsequent studies have shown that T connects with an aggressive and dogmatic personality style (Eysenck & Wilson, 1978). Communists and Fascists were furious at the suggestion they had anything in common and, as if to prove the point, Eysenck was physically assaulted by representatives of both groups at different times in his career. (my emphasis)

  3. And “Hirsh et al (2010) argue that liberals and conservatives are both value driven but the order of priority of the values is different. For liberals, openness, compassion and equality are uppermost, while conservatives are more concerned about order, tradition and reliability“. (my emphasis)

In other words, authoritarianism in this context doesn’t have the same connotation as the authoritarianism ascribed to dictators and despots.

It has more to do with a rigidity of world-view, and this authoritarianism is expressed in different ways as compared to conservatives.

That is, while conservatives will agitate against abortion, art they deem shocking, non-heterosexual sexuality, etc., liberals also do so in similar ways: safe spaces, gender pronouns, microaggressions, etc.

Of roosting chickens, circling back and WISHBs

Sun, 14 Jun 2015
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"Nothing will come of nothing." #1ismorethan0 #keeptruffling #obese #obesity #ohbabi #running #fitspo #fitness #fitspiration
“Nothing will come of nothing.” #1ismorethan0 #keeptruffling #obese #obesity #ohbabi #running #fitspo #fitness #fitspiration

The chickens came home to roost last Tuesday.

I spent the whole of that day privately making jibes at a PR company for using the term “circling back”.

They did so while corresponding with my colleagues, in instances like these:

  • “Thank you for circling back to me.” (I think they meant to say “replying”.)
  • “Circling back to our previous conversation…” (“Returning”, perhaps?)

While they weren’t exactly wrong, I was amused because their usage of the phrase was unnecessarily cumbersome.

So I mercilessly mocked them by “circling back” to the same phrase at every opportunity I got, during conversations with my office mates.

I guess it was only fitting to receive my comeuppance by inadvertently making a typo on the same day.

Shortly after knocking off, I accidentally interacted with an emotionally toxic person outside of work.

By the time I reached home, I was so drained from dealing with this person that I almost skipped my weekly run.

But I decided I wouldn’t allow myself to be affected by said individual.

So I thought I’d force myself to carry on with the workout through a bit of self-motivation, based on something I’d learnt from this post on Reddit.

Before heading off for the run, I created the image you see at the top of this post.

It’s supposed to say “1 > 0”, or one is more than zero i.e. don’t have a zero day by putting one foot forward, and then another, and so on.

Unfortunately, I only realised later that I used “<“, the lesser than sign, instead of “>”, the more than sign.

Adding insult to injury was the situational irony of my caption: “Nothing will come of nothing”.

It’s a line from the opening scene of King Lear by William Shakespeare, which I meant to use in a self-motivational manner.

However, the original line was meant to demonstrate the protagonist’s hubris…

I guess the moral of the story is: don’t “circle back” when you can “revert”?

In any case, a WISHB was in order – and duly published:

Selling it for what people want it to be

Mon, 25 May 2015
2 min read
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I first fell in love with Cassandra back in 2006.

Then an intern with Pioneer magazine, I had been sent to report on the results of the previous year’s Chief of Defence Force Essay Competition.

It was pretty standard military fare, with ideas centred on whatever was the rage of that post-9/11 and Iraq II age. The first-placed essay, for example, was a paper on terrorism, while the bronze-medallist wrote about peacekeeping operations.

Cassandra by Evelyn De Morgan (1898)
Cassandra by Evelyn De Morgan (1898)

What caught my eye was the runner-up’s paper – “The Laments of Cassandra: Reflections on Warning Intelligence in the Information Eden”.

As an English Literature undergraduate with a keen interest in military affairs, I was impressed. Officers of that era were not particularly known for their knowledge of culture, especially when compared to their predecessors from colonial times.

The irony of the metatextual context amused me further; a paper on the pitfalls of ignoring prophecies coming in second, almost as though its prescience were itself being disregarded.

Mostly, I was intrigued by the Greek myth of Cassandra. How tragic, the Romantic in me thought. To be blessed with the gift of soothsaying, but to be cursed by never having anyone believe your predictions.

Nine years on, the story of Cassandra still fascinates me. I’ve started to wonder, though, if we should uncritically accept Cassandra’s fate for what it seems to be.

It began a couple of months back, when a contact expressed a view about the nature of communication and recipient receptivity.

In his words, if the recipient has already rejected what it is you have to offer, then:

If you keep selling it for what it is, of course people are going to say “No”.

So in the modern day, where we understand so much more about human psychology, design thinking and the nature of communication, can Cassandra complain if no one believes her, especially when she persists in peddling her prophecies in the same way?

It seems to me that Cassandra has two options:

  1. Carry on with tradition, and hope her recipients see the light one day; or
  2. Reframe what she is saying – instead of selling it for what it is, sell it for what people want it to be.

Perhaps more people will finally start listening to her then.