washingtonpost.com— Psychological experiments in recent years have shown that people are not evenhanded when they process information, even though they believe they are.
Jul 31, 2006View in Crawl 4
@ jonnyehOh yeaahh...@DannohungOnly problem with that, is that you have to assign values to what you decide is a good effect and what is a bad effect. Those values (and even what's good and bad) differ between people.
I'm sure some emotion was involved in the Boston Tea party. Loyalists and separatists argued just as much as we did, as did every other political affiliation in the history of the US (Prohibitionists, the know nothing party, etc etc.) The only problem is that government power only stays static or expands, it never retracts.So what does this mean when you start out on one side (ie, protesting sytrofoam clamshells at McDonalds, etc) and end up staunchly on the other, and then proceed even further (ie: Dem->Republican->Libertarian?) Does this mean that I'm one of the few who can stamp my views as "well thought out and fully rational?" I'd like to think so, of course.
So this study suggests that partisans are...partisan? Fascinating. I wouldn't draw any earth-shattering conclusions from this research. As you learn in data analysis, there is no such thing as a perfect source -- everyone and everything has its own biases, large or small. It's not much of a problem if you know this and deliberately watch out for it -- it's what's referred to as being *reasonable*.
Certainly seems plausible, and, anecdotally, it's borne out right here. If you look at who 'diggs' a liberal piece, you'll see liberals, conservative, the reverse (and, of course, they're burying each other's pieces, as well).
classicjbcJul 31, 2006
<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias</a>I find it interesting that social sciences, which are often seen as less than their "hard" science counterparts, have theorized on this point for years. I'm not saying one set of sciences are superior to another, but I wish social psychologists would be seen with more legitimacy.
nerdyninjaJul 31, 2006
@ jonnyehOh yeaahh...@DannohungOnly problem with that, is that you have to assign values to what you decide is a good effect and what is a bad effect. Those values (and even what's good and bad) differ between people.
nonlegJul 31, 2006
I'm sure some emotion was involved in the Boston Tea party. Loyalists and separatists argued just as much as we did, as did every other political affiliation in the history of the US (Prohibitionists, the know nothing party, etc etc.) The only problem is that government power only stays static or expands, it never retracts.So what does this mean when you start out on one side (ie, protesting sytrofoam clamshells at McDonalds, etc) and end up staunchly on the other, and then proceed even further (ie: Dem->Republican->Libertarian?) Does this mean that I'm one of the few who can stamp my views as "well thought out and fully rational?" I'd like to think so, of course.
vixiecronAug 1, 2006
So this study suggests that partisans are...partisan? Fascinating. I wouldn't draw any earth-shattering conclusions from this research. As you learn in data analysis, there is no such thing as a perfect source -- everyone and everything has its own biases, large or small. It's not much of a problem if you know this and deliberately watch out for it -- it's what's referred to as being *reasonable*.
narratorAug 1, 2006
A common tactic in the Soviet Union to deal with dissenters was to put them in mental institutions. Claiming that because they did not agree with the government, in other words they were partisan, meant they were mentally ill. They are still doing it in some of the central asian republics that used to belong to the Soviets.<a class="user" href="http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/03/uzbeki11684.htm">http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/03/uzbeki11684.htm</a>
vixiecronAug 2, 2006
Koosebane has left the building.
blake1001Aug 3, 2006
Certainly seems plausible, and, anecdotally, it's borne out right here. If you look at who 'diggs' a liberal piece, you'll see liberals, conservative, the reverse (and, of course, they're burying each other's pieces, as well).