# 1 – Introduction and Personal Assessments
I am temporarily setting side my series on the domains of difference in sexual psychology and response in order to explore how our current political divide is rooted in evolutionary science and psychology. I will attempt to answer a central question:
What is the basis for a conservative or liberal political ideology and/or the difference in values between a Republican and a Democrat?
In the next two posts, I will address how the differences between men and women relate to liberalism, conservatism, social dominance (hierarchy), authoritarian impulses, and war. Based primarily on the work of Hector Garcia in Sex, Power and Partisanship, I will argue that a male-centric reproductive strategy is shaped by struggles for dominance in mate competitions while a female-centric strategy is shaped by the demands of rearing offspring. Many conservative and liberal interests and positions flow from those different priorities.
I will address a framework for personal values (the moral foundation theory of Jonathan Haidt) that elucidates the difference between a conservative and a liberal, and also touch on the personality traits (the “Big Five”) that give us more clues to political differences. I will examine our “argument culture” in this post-objectivity era of the media and the underlying psychological biases in decision-making and motivated reasoning.
Before we get to these daunting topics, please consider taking one or more personal assessments as an adjunct for self-awareness and preparation to connect with the content to come. All assessments come from YourMorals.Org.
Go there to register (see instructions below) for these assessments if you want your results delivered to you immediately. Otherwise, you may view the assessments without registering using the links below. Assessments are listed in relative importance to the upcoming posts, but all add nuance to this discussion. They answer the following questions about you:
What are your attitudes toward various groups in society?
Find out with the Social Dominance Orientation Scale, under “Attitudes Toward Groups” at YourMorals.org.
Why do you care about some virtues and issues more than others?
Find out with the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, under “General Moral Constructs” at YourMorals.Org.
What is your relationship to authority?
Find out with The RWA Scale, under “Generality Personality Measures.”
How do you rate on the five aspects of personality?
Find out by taking the Big 5 Personality Scale, also found under “Generality Personality Measures.”
The election “season” is upon us. Let’s understand what is going on beneath the surface of our political divisions and the rhetorical rancor that surrounds us. I might end the last post in this series with some healing wisdom from Brene Brown.
Click here to register at YourMorals.org: https://www.yourmorals.org/register.php
- Click “save” after completing the webform.
- After you are registered, click on “complete list of studies.” It will take you to the page where you can find the assessments in the categories listed above.
4 Comments
Submit a Comment
Please Note: Your comment may take up to 12 seconds to register and the confirmation message will appear above the “Submit a Comment” text.
OK, Steven. I have now been quantized on a number of instruments. How can I use the results to live a better life and skewer my enemies? BTW, I’m watching a great interview of John Bargh by Robert Wright on meaningoflife.tv which addresses some of the same issues. Pat
Pat, you get a gold star for taking the assessments! In many ways, the assessments will help you understand yourself better and enable you to be more understanding of your enemies. Stay tuned for the meat of the matter. But you raise an issue that I am grappling with — how can this understanding of our evolved selves (vis-a-vis men and women especially) improve our lives? There is coaching that can and will come out of this; it has not been a central focus so far because we have to first understand/admit the “truth” of who we are before we can choose (culturally evolve in proximate time) to be something else. In the meantime, knowing about gravity does not help you survive a jump off a tall building.
Steven, this is timely subject! Looking forward to completing the assessments and seeing how my results compare with my perceptions of myself.
Thank you Susan for being intrigued and noticing (the obvious) relevancy to this moment, and thank you for going the extra step and participating in the assessments!