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+--- Thread: Liberals more mentally flexible than conservatives? (/showthread.php?tid=3560)
Liberals more mentally flexible than conservatives? - rmthorn - 09-10-2007
New Scientist linky
Given there seem to be people here from both sides of the political spectrum, I thought this might be of interest.
My favourite bit:
Quote:
Out of the 500 trials that each subject completed, he or she was presented with the same letter 80% of the time. This meant that the participants felt compelled to press the same button repeatedly.
(snip)
When the less common letter did appear on the screen, the people who identified themselves as more conservative (rating themselves somewhere between 1 and 5 on the initial questionnaire) pressed the "usual" button 47% of the time instead of switching to the correct button.
By comparison, the "liberals" who placed themselves between -5 and -1 on the questionnaire responded more readily to the new signal and achieved the slightly lower error rate of 37%
Re: Liberals more mentally flexible than conservatives? - TheTwisted1 - 09-11-2007
There's a pretty good analysis from Dave Munger at ScienceBlogs here, that brings up points about the size and scope of this study.
Edit: And here is some commentary by Jonah Goldberg on the study that raises some additional points.
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