Whiny Kids Grow Up To Be Socialists or Muslims

Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid, reactionary, violent, Socialists or convert to Islam.

BY RONBO

Remember the whiny, insecure and not very bright kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a Raving Moonbat Leftist, or new convert to Islam. At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, intelligent and self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be conservatives.

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 Left. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on Leftists & Muslim 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 — 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 insecure kids tended to grow up socialist, and turned into rigid young adults who identified closely to homosexual roles and were uncomfortable with hetrosexual people.

The intelligent and confident kids turned out conservative and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn intellectual.

Block admits in his paper that socialist Berkeley is not representative of the whole country. But within his sample, he says, the results hold. He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in Leftist politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find conservative politics more congenial.

In a society that values self-confidence and being outgoing, it's a mostly flattering picture for conservatives. It also runs true to the American stereotype of wimpy socialists and strong conservatives.

These findings are backed up by John T. Jost of Stanford and colleagues in 2003 that drew a political backlash from the Left. The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the psychology of Socialism and concluded that people who are dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to the Left in the political spectrum. Critics branded it the "leftists are crazy" study and accused the authors of a political bias.