Idiotic: Liberal Psychologist Again Finds Liberals "Open-Minded," Conservatives "Close-Minded"

The InstaWife suggests an experiment to confirm or disprove these findings: posting contrarian messages on DKos or FireDogLake, to test the "openness" of liberals.

This is of course utter nonsense, as the study of course relies on self-reporting of respondents' own self-evaluation of their "open-mindedness." As liberals all claim to be "open-minded," whereas conservatives, while not claiming to be "close-minded," do insist in objective standards, it's hardly any surprise liberals would all claim they're open-minded.

I have, I think, a better test by which to judge this study. The next time this jerkoff wants to publish a silly self-reporting study and claim it actually means something, he should include the following questions:

Would you say your sense of humor is: worse than average, about average, better than average?

Would you say your code of honesty and personal ethics is: worse than average, about average, better than average?

90% of respondants will, of course, say they're average or above average on both, of course. (With the majority saying "above average.")

Which is, of course, an impossibility.

And thus refuting the whole "study."

Such "soft" and difficult-to-quantify "virtues" are ludicrously prone to over-estimated through self-evaluation. One's income is pretty objective. One's looks and sexual desirablility less so, but there is still a cold hard reality out there reminding most of us we ain't all that.

But some bullshitty, vague measure like "open-mindedness"? Please. Anyone who wants to believe he's open-minded can easily give himself top ratings for every question/scenario/prompt.

It would take very little effort to create a similar survey, with a few changes of wording and a different bias, to find that most liberals are "immoral" (believing in few standards of objective morality) and that conservatives are much more "moral (believing in such standards). All one needs to do is ask virtually the same questions, with a few modifications here and there, but this time assign a positive interpretation to those who don't claim to be "open-minded" enough to believe, say, that the taking of an innocent civilian human life is sometimes justified or at least mitigated in its evil by one's political beliefs or "disadvantaged" upbringing.

But the whole thing's a farce, anyway. Liberals' unshakable belief in their open-mindedness and willingness to "ask questions" is utterly closed to discussion and beyond questioning.

"Scientists."

Uh-huh.

Because the Dow broke 12,000... I have to add this:

I must self-report that I am open-minded about Dr. Helen taking off her shirt and dipping those puppies in Marshmallow Fluff.

Quite open-minded, indeed.

I'd say I'm in the 99% percentile when it comes to "open-mindedness" on "asethetics" and "fantasy" as far as that particular prompt.

Actually, I'm not just "open-minded." I'm "open-pantsed," as well.

I think that qualifies me for the Lightning Round or somethin'.

posted by Ace at 05:04 PM

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