How to spot a baby conservative
KID POLITICS | Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and traditional.
Future liberals, on the other hand ...
Mar. 19, 2006. 10:45 AM
KURT KLEINER
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
". . . The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn't going to make the
UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions
a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and
even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.
But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow
professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school
kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated
at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no
reason to think political bias skewed the ratings â the investigators were not
looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely
that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.
A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality,
and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and
turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and
were uncomfortable with ambiguity. . . "
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