Whining conservatives?

Many great guffaws and pats-on-the-back form the Left on a new study out that indicates that whiny, insecure kids grow up to be conservatives. After tracking 95 kids for decades, the author concluded:

The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

The amusement coming, of course, from the scientific contradiction of the idea of liberals as whiners and conservatives as confident, self-reliant types.

[Study author, UC Berkeley professor Jack Block] reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial.

An interesting perspective from, of all places, the NPR Blog:

What bothers me here is the assumption that tradition and authority are found only in conservative politics. That is a big assumption. The dogmatic nature of the left can be just as rigid and stultifying, and many people of that political persuasion have a damned poor view of heterodoxy. (Go here for an article in Slate by Will Saletan on abortion orthodoxy on the left, and I would throw in gender roles, race, labor, and a few others. And don’t even get me started on this piece from The New York Times today about tourist orthodox lefties swallowing Hugo Chavez’s propaganda hook, line and sinker.)

If you’re looking for a comfortable, predictable line that helps think your whiny thoughts for you, I’d say leftist ideology is also great, and would suffice.

A more interesting question might be, (instead of defining left as being open and loose, and right as being tight and controlled) what personality traits of children turn into political and ideological rigidity of any sort as adults? My money is that it’s the whiny ones. So next time, give ’em something to really cry about.

I worry more about political and ideological rigidity than what it’s rigid regarding.

(via Les)