Well-educated people think they are more left wing

[roxiejules]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7887570/Well-educated-people-think-they-are-more-left-wing.html


University graduates are less able to recognise their conservative tendencies than people who leave school at 16, according to the research.

Its author suggests that adults fail to notice as the political opinions of their youth weaken as they join the workforce and start families.

Additionally, because well-eductated people tend to socialise with others who have conservative views, their perception of where the ideoligical middle ground lies is skewed, wrote James Rockey, an economics lecturer at the University of Leicester.

However, earning a high salary can jolt employees into a better awareness of where they sit in the political spectrum, he added.

“Politics is social,” Mr Rockey said. “There are two main factors – the first is that people compare themselves not to the population as a whole but to the people they know; the second is that political preferences change over time.”

According to his theory, a well-educated person who spent their student days protesting for left-wing social causes in the 1980s may still perceive their political allegiances as being left-wing, even if their ideological views have shifted further to the right in recent years.

[depakid]

1. Yet another reason why self labeling often touted around here is close to meaningless

[mediaman007]

2. Well that makes some sense, since so many Teabaggers vote against their own interests.

[dalaigh lllama]

3. The article makes it sound like they based it on one question

"This was established by asking them whether they believed wealth should be divided more equally."

That sounds suitably vague enough to get a "no" from most people. I'd say their test was uber-stupid.

[roxiejules]

4. Link for research paper

Apparently they analyzed over 200 questions from the World Values Survey, here is another question that is referenced:

Imagine two secretaries, of the same age, doing practically the same job. One finds out that the other earns considerably more than she does. The better paid secretary, however, is quicker, more efficient and more reliable at her job. In your opinion, is it fair or not fair that one secretary is paid more than the other?

Link to the actual study can be found here:

http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/news/press-releases/2010-2019/2010/07/nparticle.2010-07-14.9338581392

World Values Survey is here:

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/

[socialist_n_TN]

5. Isn't this just another way of saying that

people get more conservative as they age? I know I did. I used to be a Bolshevik. :)

[roxiejules]

6. Socialists turn conservative after age 40?

More..

http://blog.taragana.com/health/2010/07/14/champagne-socialists-turn-conservative-after-40-or-so-24994/

The old adage “If you’re not a socialist at the age of 20 you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative at the age of 40, you have no brain” holds some truth, according to a new study.

Youthful liberalism and radical views gradually get diluted into a more conservative outlook as responsibilities weigh down with age.

[socialist_n_TN]

8. Nah! Young Socialists turn into liberals..........

Young LIBERALS turn into conservatives as they age.

[provis99]

9. and young conservatives turn into Tea Baggers.

[roxiejules]

11. Good one!

:toast:

Thanks, provis99

[roxiejules]

12. I think you hit the nail on the head!

Thanks, socialist_n_TN

:toast:

[AnneD]

15. Nahhhh...

2 words...Mother Jones.

[struggle4progress]

7. Just a little tweak, and we'd see in the Telegraph a Marxist theory of the production of class

consciousness:

people associate with other people having a similar position in society and take their cues from the people with whom they associate. the laborers hang out with laborers; the middle class professionals socialize with middle class professionals; the top corporate folk associate with top corporate folk. in countless interactions, they all learn a collection of views of the world and of how to understand and maintain their own place in the world; they all reproduce little self-justifying subcultural mythologies

[JoeyT]

10. Actually that's true of ALL conservatives, not just the well educated ones.

An awful lot of people in the South think they're in the "center" and they hate minorities, gays, women, and anything that isn't in the bible. They seem to think trickle down economics was handed down by Jesus himself, along with a demand we constantly kill furriners.
They're as far right as right gets. Still a whole bunch think they're in the center.

I think a lot of people just want to think of themselves as being rationalists in the "center" while everyone that disagrees with them on any issues is a "radical" (Another stupid meaningless term.) in one direction or the other.

[roxiejules]

13. Here's the conservative blogger opinion on the study:

Why middle-class Lefties believe stupid things – because their friends do - Ed West, Telegraph

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100047245/why-middle-class-lefties-believe-stupid-things-because-their-friends-do/

I know many Left-wing people who don’t have a single conservative friend, and almost never hear a single conservative view expressed directly or on the radio, nor do they read a single dissenting opinion.

Another noticeable difference between “liberals” and conservatives in London is that if you look on the bookshelves of the former you will find, among hundreds of non-fiction and fiction titles, not a single work by a conservative. In contrast Tories always have a few Left-wing books, not because we’re more open-minded but simply because this is the prevailing cultural ethos and we have no choice.

This perfectly explains why certain “progressive” views taught by Marxist lecturers in the 1960s and 1970s have been able to take hold and take over our society, despite the majority of people believing, correctly, that they are foolish and the people articulating them hypocrites and frauds.

[AnneD]

14. Thus the thinly veiled attack....

on our education system and the vilification of teachers. Business can't wait to get their hand on education money via charters. This is not limited to the USA. All totalitarian regimes vilify and criminalize education and thinking.