The Politics of Fear 0
At Science 2.0, Hank Campbell reports on a study that may shed some light on why Republicans practice the politics of fear.
“It’s been said that conservatives and liberals don’t see things in the same way,” said Mike Dodd, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) assistant professor of psychology and the study’s lead author. “These findings make that clear – quite literally.”
Mr. Campbell is careful to point out that, despite the researchers’ attempts to divine some evolutionary cause for this, correlation is not causation; the study does not explain why conservatives are more fearful than liberals (or perhaps it’s the reverse: the fearful are more likely to lean to the right).
It does, however, help explain why the Republicans tend to pitch their appeals to the dark side of human nature. It speaks to their followers.
Follow the link for more details and a desription of the study’s methodology.
