Liberal comment trolling polarizes conservatives (but not vice versa), study says

[Ichingcarpenter]

A set of recent experiments by Lafayette College professor Elizabeth Suhay suggests that inflammatory liberal blog comments do more to enrage and polarize conservatives than inflammatory conservative comments do to enrage and polarize liberals. Suhay took recent debates on the sequester, and then set up online experiments where she exposed people to a neutral news article on the sequester plus two politically neutral comments (the control group), or to uncivil comments from a liberal/Democratic perspective, or a conservative/Republican perspective. Both sets of uncivil comments were inflammatory and aimed at attacking the other side rather than providing substantial arguments. Suhay expected that this would cause polarization on both the left and the right. That’s not what she found:

it was expected that liberals/Democrats would move to the left (e.g., opposing the sequester and supporting Obama), and that conservatives/Republicans would move to the right (e.g., supporting the sequester and opposing Obama), in response to incivility from the left and right. However, when the results from the interactive models were graphed, we only saw polarization among those on the right. This suggests a greater sensitivity to incivility among conservatives and Republicans. Why this is the case is unclear at this time; however, previous research has shown that incivility does appear to be more common in conservative than liberal media.

It’s important to note that this is just one set of experiments — different patterns may emerge as more work is done. .....................



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/10/07/liberal-comment-trolling-polarizes-conservatives-but-not-vice-versa-study-says/

[alphafemale]

1. Republicans have a swarm/piranha mentality to perceived dissent

Liberal minded people are more likely to let trolls strangle in their own echoes.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. It says conservatives

which includes more than republicans. But your point is well taken and true.

[Fumesucker]

7. Plenty of conservative Democrats, indeed there is one here named exactly that

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. Not quite what they're looking at, I think.

Plenty of liberals are willing to play with trolls, even insult them back.

it was expected that liberals/Democrats would move to the left (e.g., opposing the sequester and supporting Obama), and that conservatives/Republicans would move to the right (e.g., supporting the sequester and opposing Obama), in response to incivility from the left and right.

They seem to rather be looking to see if such comments actually make each side 'dig in their heels' and become more staunchly ideological.

Sadly, what this suggests is that Republicans wanting 'shore up' their voting block can actually do so by doing false flag trolling runs on any site.

[RobertEarl]

3. we do get under their skin

One reason is - as concerns the subject of the study - Obama was on the correct side.

And with pretty much everything else these days, conservatives are being shown they are idiots, hence we get under their skin.

[JHB]

5. Because conservatives have trained "their team" to go into counterattack mode...

...whereas liberals have been enduring boorish online conservatives since "online" existed.

[Fumesucker]

6. Being too liberal is seen as a bad thing by many self proclaimed Democrats

"Fringe left", "brogressive", "fornicating cognitively challenged", "pony wishing", "poutrage", there are quite a few ways some Democrats have of saying "too far left".

On the other hand it is impossible to be too conservative.. There exists no equivalent insult on the right that I've ever heard of, perhaps we could ask trumad if an equivalent term gets thrown around on Free Republic.

[treestar]

8. Conservatives, due to weakness of their arguments

are indeed much quicker to go ad hominem. They will quickly be talking about the person who said a thing, not the issue they were talking about.

[Cosmic Kitten]

9. Generally, Liberal & Conservatives have different brain structures

This OP study parallels previous
research done on brain structure
and political self-identification.

For example:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2900289-2?cc=y

Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures [ 1 ]. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors [ 2, 3 ]. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex [ 4 ]. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in self-regulatory conflict monitoring [ 4 ] and recognition of emotional faces [ 5 ] by showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work [ 4, 6 ] to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.

Consequently, "conservatives" are
more prone to emotive responses
rather than reasoned responses.

In politics, emotion trumps reason.
In life, fear trumps reason.
Until the left grasps this concept
we will continue to lose ground.

We need to get into the mindset
of others to meet them on their level.
The "conservative" mind will not overcome
it's biological predisposition to fear and tribalism.
We cannot elevate the minds of people
who we cannot comprehend.