Liberals place more value on being funny than conservatives and libertarians.

23Apr/11

Liberals place more value on being funny than conservatives and libertarians.

I've been watching a lot of comedy central lately and have been wondering why there does not appear to be a conservative equivalent, just as there is no popular liberal equivalent to conservative AM talk radio. Perhaps liberals value being funny more than conservatives?

To test this idea, I thought I'd look at the data from the Good Self Scale from yourmorals.org. In it, participants are asked how important it is to have various traits, and one of them happens to be "funny". If you look at the below graph, you'll see that liberals do indeed place a tiny bit more value on being funny, compared to others (p<.01 comparing liberals to non-liberals).

It is important to note that this does not mean that liberals are indeed funnier, but rather that they place a value on being funny. The results seem plausible given that the rest of the results conform to previous research (e.g. conservatives care about loyalty more and care about being more responsible). Some observations:

All groups are above the midpoint (2.5) of the scale for all traits, except for libertarians and their valuation of being generous, outgoing, and sympathetic. Instead, libertarians score high on being intellectual and logical.
Moderates actually score highest in terms of valuing fairness and honesty. A very interesting finding.
Liberals, in addition to wanting to be funny, also want to be creative, kind, sympathetic, and almost as intellectual as libertarians.
Conservatives value being responsible, loyal, and honest (comparable to moderates for honesty).

In all, these are fair descriptions of these ideological groups, and given that the other relationships are reasonable, I would conclude that it's also reasonable to say that liberals likely do place more value on being funny than other ideological groups. Whether they succeed or not is another question.

- Ravi Iyer

Comments

comments

Tagged as: comedy, conservatives, liberals, libertarians Leave a comment

Old Comments (4) Trackbacks (0)

Guy Smiley
May 4th, 2011 - 14:59

“it is important to note that this does not mean that liberals are indeed funnier, but rather that they place a value on being funny.”
“Conservatives value being responsible, loyal, and honest”

* It is important to note that this does not mean that conservatives are indeed more responsible, loyal, and honest.
Michael Anderson
May 16th, 2011 - 08:00

It is also important to point out that liberals score nearly as highly as libertarians on wanting to be intellectual–but much lower relative to libertarians in the “logical” category. Which shows that liberals talk a good game, but can’t back it up.
Ravi
August 14th, 2011 - 21:24

http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/10/colberts-super-pac-launches-first-tv-ad-supporting-rick-parry/

Just wanted to save that link along with this post.
Benjamin David Steele
April 24th, 2012 - 15:01

@Michael Anderson: As a liberal intellectual, I feel a need to respond. What I’ve found in my studies is that there is so much more to intellectual understanding than just logic, although I do put a high value on logic. I’ve met a certain kind of intellectual who seems emotionally detached or emotionally unaware. They are good at arguing and maybe even winning arguments, but they seem to confuse winning a debate with being right. Many Christian apologists are great debaters and yet completely wrong about their beliefs. Logic is superficial at best and deceiving at worst without deeper insight or deeper love of knowledge.

From my liberal perspective, I’m less interested in winning debates. I see intellectual discussions as opportunities to learn about and explore new ideas and viewpoints. Sometimes a new idea/view can seem illogical based on certain premises, but by exploring beyond one’s preferred logic can allow for new understandings and a change of one’s premises. If a person is too attached to logical certainty, this can short-circuit the ability to change one’s mind according to new info.

Liberal intellectual probably tend to see less opposition between intellectual logic and intellectual openness, but the priority is put on curiosity. Even seemingly illogical ideas can be worthy of intellectual curiosity, if only to understand why someone would believe such ideas.