The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Should Protect Fair Negotiations (not the poor)
Recently, President Obama appointed Richard Cordray to be the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created in the wake of the financial crisis to protect consumers. What exactly does it mean to ‘protect consumers’?
To some, the goal of the agency is to protect the poor, by regulating companies that provide “payday loans” to [...]
Equity trumps Equality in arguments about taxation
It is more effective to advocate for progressive taxation using arguments about equity or deservingness rather than arguments about how unequal American society has become.
I have written about this before, using different data, but with renewed attention being paid to rising inequality, leading liberals to continue to push for rising taxes for the rich, [...]
Hypermoral Debt Ceiling Quotes
In an attempt to popularize psychological theories such as idealistic evil and the dark side of moral conviction, I sometimes use the term hypermoral to describe why ostensibly good people (e.g. non-psychopaths), can be led to do terrible things for ostensibly moral reasons. Research suggests that much of the violence that exists in the world [...]
Libya as a moral war (except for libertarians)
Many people believe that war and violence are inherently immoral, and some psychologists have begun to explore the idea that celebrating heroism is an antidote to the problem of evil. In contrast, other psychologists have highlighted the dark side of moral conviction (Skitka & Mullen, 2002) and the notion of idealistic evil (Baumeister, 1997) to [...]
When Ingroup Love does not equal Outgroup Hate
Recently, Jon Haidt wrote a an opinion piece about the death of Bin Laden, which points out that people are expressing love for their ingroup, it does not necessarily translate to hate of other groups. As I’ve said before, few things in psychology are categorically one thing or the other, and certainly there is a [...]
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 [...]
Perceptions of Scarcity & Responsibility inform Budget Negotiations
I was recently asked about the psychology of scarcity and it gave me an excuse to revisit an old paper by Skitka and Tetlock (1992, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) that contains a more complex version of the model I depict below. Like many who are interested in politics, I’ve been following the recent budget [...]
Psychological Correlates of Feelings Toward Labor Unions among Liberals
I have been reading a great deal lately about the labor battle in Wisconsin lately. As someone who rarely has had a traditional job, I have never had a well formed opinion about unions and it has been an interesting opportunity to think about the role of unions in society. There have been a great [...]
Are liberals more neurotic than conservatives?
At our recent meeting of social psychologists, I had a few conversations about a particular facet of our data, the fact that liberals in our dataset score higher on measures of neuroticism than conservativism. The effect in our data is small, but not insignificant (d=.24 of the standard deviation). This surprised some people in that [...]
Main Themes of This Blog
- •Book Reviews – Consilience between psychology and books I read.
- •Hypermoralism – Morality causes ordinary people to do immoral things.
- •What are the psychological differences that make people liberal democrats, conservative republicans, or libertarians?
Categories
- book reviews
- business of psychology
- civil politics
- consilience
- consumer psychology
- differences between republicans and democrats
- drug laws
- gross domestic product
- hypermoralism
- justice and fairness
- libertarians
- Links
- main themes of this blog
- misc
- moral confabulation
- moral confabulation in the news
- moral emotions
- moral foundations
- moral imagination
- moral psychology
- news commentary
- political psychology
- positive psychology
- replications of other studies
- the old polipsych
- unpublished results
- War and Peace
- yourmorals.org
Blogroll
- AboutMyJob.com
- My Friend Zendi’s Blog
- Pilates Anytime – Online Pilates Classes
- Susan Gaissert’s Political Blog
- Tara Met Blog
- The Music is Over – Musician Obituaries
- What Is Your Happiness?
- YourMorals.org
Explore
academia
aggression
civility
conservatives
consilience
difference between democrats and republicans
differences between liberals and conservatives
disgust
empathy
equality
equity
fairness
health care
hypermoralism
idealistic evil
incivility
interest in politics
jon stewart
liberals
liberals and conservatives
libertarians
libya
moral absolutism
moral foundations
moral maximizing
moral psychology
moral relativism
neuroticism
new york times
openness to experience
partisanship
peace
peer review
political behavior
political interest
psychological reactance
religion
social dominance orientation
social psychology
stephen colbert
testosterone
utilitarianism
war
zappos
zero sum book reviews (7)
business of psychology (11)
civil politics (14)
consilience (18)
consumer psychology (3)
differences between republicans and democrats (19)
drug laws (3)
gross domestic product (1)
hypermoralism (11)
justice and fairness (6)
libertarians (7)
Links (1)
main themes of this blog (3)
misc (1)
moral confabulation (9)
moral confabulation in the news (7)
moral emotions (3)
moral foundations (4)
moral imagination (2)
moral psychology (25)
news commentary (32)
political psychology (57)
positive psychology (12)
replications of other studies (8)
the old polipsych (4)
unpublished results (18)
War and Peace (7)
yourmorals.org (64)
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Archive
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- April 2009
- September 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- June 2006
- May 2004
- April 2004
Last 30 Posts:
- January 25, 2012
Why doesn’t Ron Paul use the word ‘America’ much? - January 7, 2012
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Should Protect Fair Negotiations (not the poor) - December 11, 2011
The Experiential Economy - November 2, 2011
The Moral Foundations of ThinkProgress, Alternet, Daily Kos, & the NY Times - October 15, 2011
Liberals vs. Conservatives:innocent until proven guilty? - September 11, 2011
Does social psychology try too hard to be perceived as a “science”? - August 31, 2011
Equity trumps Equality in arguments about taxation - July 31, 2011
Hypermoral Debt Ceiling Quotes - July 17, 2011
Libya as a moral war (except for libertarians) - July 10, 2011
Oregon’s Medicaid Experiment vs. Motivated Reasoning - June 18, 2011
Relative vs. Absolute Good Choices for Liberals, Conservatives, and Libertarians - May 23, 2011
Personality profiles of readers vs. non-readers and saving your local bookstore. - May 9, 2011
When Ingroup Love does not equal Outgroup Hate - May 2, 2011
Osama Bin Laden’s Death is a chance to escape Zero-Sum thinking - April 23, 2011
Liberals place more value on being funny than conservatives and libertarians. - April 21, 2011
Jon Kyl’s Moral Confabulation is something we all do. - March 30, 2011
Why should the US lead in Libya? Liberal-Conservative Value Differences. - March 24, 2011
Perceptions of Scarcity & Responsibility inform Budget Negotiations - February 27, 2011
Psychological Correlates of Feelings Toward Labor Unions among Liberals - February 22, 2011
Reagan was a Union Member – Visiting his Library as an exercise in Civil Politics - February 15, 2011
Psychology is generally Continuous, not Categorical - February 11, 2011
Are liberals more neurotic than conservatives? - February 10, 2011
Can liberal academics study conservative ideology? - January 17, 2011
Rush Limbaugh says Civility is the New Censorship - January 11, 2011
You can’t put out a Fire with Gasoline – A Reaction to reactions to the Giffords Shooting - December 29, 2010
Tony Washington’s NFL Story: How wrong is brother-sister incest? - December 18, 2010
Tony Hsieh, liberals, and libertarians prefer buying experiences to materialism – A Review of Delivering Happiness - December 7, 2010
The Case for Honesty as a Moral Foundation - December 2, 2010
The Definition of Moral Hazard and A Review of The Big Short - November 23, 2010
Does conflict avoidance underlie disproportionate liberal support of civility?
Civil Politics Posts
- Tom Edsall's Guide to What Each Side Gets Right January 23, 2012 Jonathan Haidt
- Keystone Pipeline's Unlikely Allies January 21, 2012 Bill Bishop
- Center Aisle Caucus brings bipartisan civility to congress October 26, 2011 Ravi Iyer
- 6 Structural Ideas to turn Partisans into Americans from The Atlantic August 5, 2011 Ravi Iyer
- 95% of Americans want civility in politics & 87% believe it's possible to get there July 21, 2011 Ravi Iyer
Why doesn’t Ron Paul use the word ‘America’ much?
A colleague of mine forwarded me this article in the New York Times, which compared the presidential candidates’ usages of various terms. Some words require more context, but what struck him (and me, after I saw it) in this graph is the fact that Ron Paul doesn’t use the words America or American very much, [...]