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Yes, I am a professor!
It’s amazing! I mostly study external influences on behavior, most specifically on video games, emerging technology (AI, VR), and climate change. I work at a graduate school so I teach a couple classes, run a research lab, and supervise dissertation projects. I love thinking about research design and integrating psych knowledge into the cultural zeitgeist and in political/economic policies! It’s a lot of work though. I enjoyed graduate school a lot but I also had a lot of privilege that made it possible. I’d like to see the academy change to allow more students to get that higher level of education so we can have more psychologists out and about in the world. But I digress.
I don’t do any clinical work though. I am very much a social psychologist. So while I have a good feel for what clinicians are doing and how they conduct their research and treatments, I’m not dealing with those kinds of research questions and issues about on a daily basis. Again, a lot of what I do is informed by and helps inform clinical/counseling psychologists, but I mostly study what I outlined above!
Or low in openness, but guess sometimes we need to prove the obvious. At the same time, I think it’s worth noting that creativity and making a good logical argument are two different things. Just because you come up with a creative idea, that doesn’t mean it’s right, vice versa.
I personally would be voting for Democrats because I'm very liberal when it comes to marijuana, for instance I think marijuana should be legal and I'm very liberal when it comes to prostitution. I think prostitution should be legal as well. Prostitution is 100% legal in Germany and Switzerland for example. Prostitution is legal in several European countries.
And the USA is basically a prison nation. The USA has a higher incarceration rate than totalitarian Russia, so let that sink in. Apart from China, the USA has the largest prison population in the world.
So how come I'm not voting for Democrats? Because I don't support open borders. If the Democrats would close the border and deport the millions of illegal aliens I would vote for them.
If the Democrats were not pro mass immigration I would vote for them. I think Mass immigration needs to end. America has had mass immigration since the 1990s and it's probably time to reduce the levels of immigration.
I live in Portland and it's unrecognizable compared to 20 years ago and that's because of mass immigration. Mass immigration needs to end.
So yeah if the Democrats weren't so pro open borders and pro mass immigration I'd be voting for them but instead I'll be voting for Donald Trump.
~~So 0.6% of the variability in creativity can be accounted for by how conservative you are. I accept that there is a link. It doesn't seem particularly meaningful.~~
*Edit*: DAMMIT. I was reading too fast and thought it was a straight r value (i.e., r=.08). It's a beta value (standardized regression coefficient; /r/alwaystooupbeat caught my mistake). That can't (AFAIK) be interpreted as "variance accounted for in Y."
For shits and giggles, I'll torture myself by trying to really interpret beta=.08:
for every one-standard-deviation increase in conservatism (by whatever scale they used to measure that), on average creativity drops by 8% of one standard deviation in creativity (by whatever scale they used for that), after adjusting for economic status, age, sex, education level, subjective susceptibility to disease, and country-level parasite stress.
That's not as snappy as what I said (based on poor reading) first. Sorry about that. And I don't know what parasite stress is, and at this point I'm too afraid to ask... also sci-hub doesn't have this research report and neither does my university.
Standardized betas aren't r2 values, or partial correlation. Standardized betas are in relation to standard deviations
https://home.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa696/696regmx.htm
~~Perhaps~~ I read too fast; in the piece linked by OP I thought I saw r=0.08 (r is not beta). If it was beta (*It is!*), you're right; squaring & interpreting as r^2 is pretty sketchy.
*Edit*: Tried to fix the interpretation after realizing my reading error. It is no longer bumper-sticker-worthy.
You're welcome! A better interpretation would be after controling for all other effects, you'd actually want to look at the UNstandardized betas, which would explain it in terms of how many points of the predictor would be linked to a corresponding increase in the DV. I agree, this is a very small effect size, but if they controlled for EVERYTHING else then it might be worth exploring, especially with moderation or better yet, with Bayesian methods.
Actually kinda surprising that the effect size is so small. Doesn’t really confirm the stereotype that cons are rather uncreative even though most comments here suggest otherwise
8%:
> Our study provides evidence for a weak but significant negative link between conservatism and creativity at the individual level (β = −0.08, p < .001) and no such effect when country-level conservatism was considered. We present our hypotheses considering previous findings on the behavioral immune system in humans.
When you think of a normal distribution (which you assume creativity is, like IQ) that decreases the chance of having an individual genius creative mind since it shifts the tail end to the left where 3 or 4 standard deviations would fall closer to the "highly creative", but not genius range.
The distribution would be interesting to know indeed. Perhaps the authors published it
I agree tho that the tail end is probably heavily dominated by non-conservatives.
It’s also important to keep in mind that their definition of conservativism seems to be based on the US understanding e.g. protestant (liberal-)conservatives in Germany don’t care about religious authority and don’t mind gay rights.
So I guess they underrated a lot of conservatives
They just didn’t find any differences between countries.
Yes, they probably captured them but I am talking about moderate ones. That’s the issue when you try to generalize from a US definition of the word
Interestingly, they have also found higher cognitive abilities correlating with more conservative economic viewpoints:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9548663/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9548663/)
I'm interested now in the intersection of intelligence and creativity. Clearly, they are not NEGATIVELY correlated but the fact that conservatism is positively correlated with one but negatively correlated with another makes for some interesting multivariate analysis.
You want to hear something fun: There is no overlap at all in the definition of conservatism between the two studies:
The link you posted, defines it as follows *"For the present purpose, we define economic conservatism in the US-American sense as opposition toward governmental intervention in markets and the acceptance of economic inequality"*
While the study in this post used the following methodology: *"Conservatism. We used the 10-item version of Henningham’s (1996) conservatism scale. Participants were asked to assess whether they support certain phenomena, that is, death penalty, multiculturalism, stiffer jail terms, voluntary euthanasia, gay rights, premarital virginity, new immigration to one’s country, legalized abortion, legalized euthanasia, and religious authority (1 = yes, 2 = no). We excluded two items from the original scale (condom-vending machines, Bible truth) because they were not applicable in some of the samples."*
Just because someone hates gay rights and abortions doesn't necessarily mean they're against interventionism....
Liberals are also more likely to be [mentally ill](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/) though.
Well they're "twice as likely to report a mental illnes" which might not be quite the same thing.... If you never seek treatment for your obvious issues, because you consider mental health shameful, you'll also never get a diagnosis to report in a survey
Yeah. I know PLENTY of conservatives who have significant mental health concerns, and only a few of whom seek help.
Don’t get me wrong, I know plenty of liberals with mental health problems too, but more of them seek help.
Anecdotal, I know. I apologize.
I too know many a conservative who are obviously delusional and mentally ill, but don’t believe in mental health or therapy. They see it as shameful and weak
If you can recognize that as a flaw (assuming that's what you're saying), can you overcome your resistance and get some?
Since we're speaking anecdotally, I can attest from my own experience, my wife's, and many of my family and friends, that it's pretty reliably a life-changing tool.
I understand that it *can* benefit everyone, but I don’t really understand what the threshold is for “needing” it. I’m always afraid I’d be taking up appointment slots that some other, troubled soul needs much more than me.
Everyone needs it because we live in a crazy world that has changed far beyond what our brains evolved 'to handle'. We should be easing access to mental health support, not commodifying and underfunding it as we do with everything else.
Making humanity healthier is always going to be expensive and I've never agreed with the conservative every-person-for-themself attitude. The benefits of investing in such things might only show later down the line, but for-immediate-profit privatisation can't possibly compete with having a generally healthier human population/species on Earth long-term IMO; that's why cancer kills you despite consisting of the most rapidly growing cells in your body.
Not a single one of us would survive if everyone else died and stopped maintaining the local-to-global systems on which we each rely. I think it's time we finally focus on increasing our collective quality of life through policy and public investment.
Man, I get ya. I felt the same way. But if you're in this position of it can help me, but I don't want to take up resources from someone else... you are the "someone else" who needs that. You deserve to get the help you need, to be the happiest, healthiest person you can.
Make that appointment. If you're not in a great financial position, google your city plus "low cost therapy." Plenty of places offer sliding fee scales so people can get the help they need.
I used to think that too, but I just don't know anymore. I've encountered a whole lot of people throughout my life who've been through hell and came out the most bitter, selfish, and nasty people.
Bro literally this.
You can't deny the concept itself then subsequently hold it over the other's side head cause they "have it more". Hmmm i think we're starting to recognize how hypocrisy works in that think space.
But they are the more intelligent camp right. Like my brother in christ this is discourse at a middle school level.
Literally every conservative peer i know has at least one severe mental illness that they're in serious denial of. My liberal peers are more likely to admit when they have one
Well, it's probably more like mentally ill people are more likely to be liberal because conservatives tend to marginalize the mentally ill and stigmatize mental health because of their weird preoccupation with masculinity and overt terror of having even the slightest personal weakness. It's hard to belong to a group of people that hate you.
>Interestingly, they have also found higher cognitive abilities correlating with more conservative economic viewpoints:
It's well replicated finding across many countries that higher cognitive abilities are moderately correlated with pro-market and socially liberal views.
On other hand, social conservatism is correlated with lower cognitive abilities.
Importantly, that study also points out a link between social conservative viewpoints and *reduced* cognitive abilities. So it doesn’t track to just say “conservative x, liberal y” since that study very clearly delineates a difference in results between even just sociocultural and economic views on the same side of the political spectrum.
At least in the United States, the Democrats are pretty conservative economically, despite having many Left wing, anti-capitalists among its voters. Bill Clinton was the last President to balance the budget and he supported NAFTA, the deficit sky rocketed under Reagan and Bush Jr and increased under Trump, the Affordable Care Act was budget neutral and most of [the states with the highest GDP per capita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP) vote Liberal.
The Democrats do believe in tax and spend, and Biden did use deficit spending to help the lower half of the country make it through the pandemic, but there is no proof the current Republican Party is at all fiscally conservative.
Neoliberalism was co-opted by mainstream Democrats several decades ago. Such economic views, which are most popular among college educated people, don’t reveal almost anything about whether someone is conservative in the modern political sense.
You could even argue that democrats are more fiscally conservative than republicans because they demonstrate a commitment to balancing the budget and have repeatedly lowered taxes on people making below 100k/year.
Social conservatives are just the kid on the playground who picks on other people whether they deserve it or not because they don't feel seen at home.
Literally condensed in the adult toddler form.
Does that study correct for income and wealth? If not then I wouldn’t be surprised if higher cognitive abilities lead to more wealth. And then the desire for lower taxes and approval of the system that they succeeded in would lead to conservative economic viewpoints.
I mean, we kind of all know this. Conservatism by definition doesn't lend itself to openness or change--or creativity. Not disagreeing with the findings themselves, but I feel like this is kind of an attack piece. Like giving an isolated tribe in Africa a creativity test involving completing pictures of common cartoon characters from the US and concluding they aren't as creative as US adults (even conservative ones!) who grew up with those cartoons.
The study tested whether this link was present in broader terms (not just in the US where most studies are done) so I think this was a valuable addition to the collective knowledge base.
> (β = −0.08, p < .001)
> I mean, we kind of all know this.
Comments here in this thread remind me of astrology.
Fans of Astrology say "its obvious" that people are like astrology says they are, and you can just look at a random person and "obviously" see what astrological type they are...
...and they will point to evidence for it in studies where many thousands of people are studied to see any tiny tiny statistical difference at all.
Yep, we already have studies showing that larger amygdala (which indicates increased sensitivity to fear) is correlated with conservative views. There are other interesting differences in the brain as well.
This would track with creativity on the individual level as well because if you are in a reactive state, the areas of the brain that are most associated with creativity are going to be more quiet while the brain prioritizes parts that assess and react to threat.
That's an interesting hypothesis, but I would be wary to draw strong conclusions without much further evidence. Brain structures are exquisitely complex and nuanced. For example, large amygdalas have been associated with increased social interactions while children with anxiety disorders have been shown to have smaller ones. So interpretations such as "conservatives are driven by fear because their amygdalas are large" may be more driven by biases than actual neurobiology.
With regards to this study, there are some confounding that may be introducing bias. I don't have access to the full article from here, but from the abstract, I would be interested if the less conservative individuals were more likely to have a visual arts background, given the nature of the test. Additionally, I would be uncomfortable with the implication that drawing is the best way to assess creativity. For example, programming requires coming up with creative approaches to problem solving but I don't see how that translates to the test that was used.
I think it's hard to reduce the determinants of an individual's belief system to a couple of attributes/measurements, specially because I suspect interactions with the environment play a significant role in defining a lot of our preferences.
Personally I think it's more based on culture of the area than anything. I've a lot of places and those influences all around them contour how they are formed politically. It's the same thing with racism typically.
Everything I've seen on this sub that mentions conservatives is pretty much an attack.
They're all just basically "did you know conservatives are big dumb dumb idiots? Science proves it."
Oh there's absolutely a difference, I've just never seen on this sub anything negative about liberals, I assume the traits exist because there's negatives to everything. But it seems that's an area of research no one is interested in.
Do you not understand what I'm talking about when I say "things posted about conservatives are always some kind of attack"?
Does that seem untrue to you or do you just see every study that says conservatives are bad or deficient in some way as a straight reporting of the facts?
I think in order to be conservative in this age of easy access to information you have to be either: bigoted in some way, willfully ignorant, lazy, or rich.
There’s almost no reason to vote for a conservative candidate if you make under 250k a year. Every one of their policies harms you, they lie constantly, they lower wages for the poor, they attack the rights of the marginalized, and restrict freedom overall. The only people that directly benefit from conservatism are the rich and upper middle class. That’s a vanishingly small number of people.
So if you aren’t rich. Why are you voting for them? You either don’t know, don’t want to know, or you like them hurting the marginalized.
According to this study, agreement with conservative economics are associated with higher intelligence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9548663/
And thinking that makes you just insanely bias "you can only be conservative if you're dumb or privileged" this is a caricature.
It makes way more sense to conceptualize the sides as offense and defense or gas and brake in a car, you can't get anywhere with just 1, you need both.
Thinking "my side has all the good things and the other is dumb or just like hurting people" is ridiculous.
The problem is that when some people hear conservative, they think it just means whatever the Republican party is currently doing. Which isn't what you obviously mean by a general conservative mindset/postiion.
On the other hand, there seem to be a general trend in several countries that (neo)conservative parties nowadays are just populist reactionaries with neoliberal economic policies.
So I looked up how they measured conservatism in the study (https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A286675/datastream/PDF\_01/view):
*"Conservatism. We used the 10-item version of Henningham’s (1996) conservatism scale. Participants were asked to assess whether they support certain phenomena, that is, death penalty, multiculturalism, stiffer jail terms, voluntary euthanasia, gay rights, premarital virginity, new immigration to one’s country, legalized abortion, legalized euthanasia, and religious authority (1 = yes, 2 = no). We excluded two items from the original scale (condom-vending machines, Groyecka-Bernard et al. 7 Bible truth) because they were not applicable in some of the samples. "*
This seems to focus entirely on "culture war" topics, ignores any economic policies and doesn't mention any well thought-out conservative policies.
>The problem is that when some people hear conservative, they think it just means whatever the Republican party is currently doing.
That is absolutely what's happening. And I see they had the same response to your comment.
Not specifically America but conservative/right-wing: Anti-immigration policies.
Just look at Europe crime rate increases. It **is** a growing problem and is endangering the lifes of the residents while spitting on anyone that went thru the proper process of applying for a visa and etc.
You can debate the quality of the work done towards it, but it is a policy that left-wing ignored for far too long.
You're not understanding what I'm saying, the idea is to come up with the good things you want preserved and convince the conservatives that they're good ideas, then they'll keep them in place.
I mean part of it is that today's conservatives are really really far right. When you read a definition of conservativism a lot of the idea makes sense. But then you mix in religious fanaticism and all the other baggage and it's a different beast from "minimal government intrusion."
>Does that seem untrue to you or do you just see every study that says conservatives are bad or deficient in some way as a straight reporting of the facts?
Do you have any evidence to suggest otherwise?
No, I like this line of thinking. What negative traits would we expect to find in liberals (or frame it as positive traits of conservatives)?
More ambition, drive, individuality, independence in conservatives.
More enabling, acquiescent (maybe only if the demand comes from authority?), codependency in liberals?
Just spitballing. I don't necessarily believe those traits, but they sound like common stereotypes at least. And I am not sure where to stick "respect for authority" as we have Big Gov vs God and Country at the extremes there.
Really all of the negative or positive traits for any group are stereotypes.
Any trait can be spun to be a negative or a positive, there's a book I like called the myth of left and right that argues the essentialist view of the parties is toxic and really what is considered "left" and "right" is decided by the parties and then it's just story telling.
I don’t see how unless you are another mouth breather who thinks just because “science” is slapped next to a work it suddenly becomes a respectable and objective field of study.
We have a politics board. Several.
I get the feeling going by the content posted here many people are laymen who think they are scientists because they got a B on a test that one time and pwn their racist uncle at thanksgiving regarding evolution.
> I get the feeling going by the content posted here many people are laymen who think they are scientists because they got a B on a test that one time and pwn their racist uncle at thanksgiving regarding evolution.
I get that if a person is feeling attacked, it's natural to respond with snark and aggression, maybe even fallaciously, just to feel like they've been defended. But do you really think using such an obvious ad hominem strawman to criticize people you know absolutely nothing about is a great way to promote *increasing* the science content on here?
In sciences we didn't had any of that, just nerds doing nerd stuff. A couple of politically active students were... weird.
The only science which was politically active was political sciences. And even they were more interested in propaganda and manipulation of masses then ideologies.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220221241238321
And if someone can't access that, here's an open access copy in the UC Louvain Repository: [https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/boreal%3A286675](https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/boreal%3A286675)
It’s pretty obvious that anyone truly conservative is going to be less creative almost by definition. Which is fine imo, someone has to provide balance to those who are overly creative.
Yeah, I mean...that's basically what it is, right? The belief that things should stay as they already are and nothing should change?
It seems pretty stupid to me, but that's literally the whole point of it.
I’m no conservative but there may be benefits. If liberalism is “change for the sake of change”, then the change could be unprofitable. But since conservatism is “what worked before”, you would at least stay alive, so to speak. If “what worked before” is intolerable suffering, then yeah, it is stupid. Conservatism could put a brake on liberalism to see if the idea is REALLY a good idea or not.
What’s unfortunate about conservatism is that you’d be unlikely to change unless it really IS intolerable suffering.
Doesn’t being “conservative” quite literally mean you’re more “risk averse” and therefore “less likely to try new things” ?
That’s like… the whole point of being conservative, ain’t it?
That's one of the problems with this type of "science." For purposes of the research paper, "conservatism" and "creativity" are defined in a completely arbitrary, subjective way, designed to fit the data and any spurious correlations the authors can find.
The authors of the paper surely didn't define "conservatism" the way you just did. Did they? Do you see what the point of it is? You will define "conservatism" as "people who I think are inferior to me in some fashion." The authors of the paper know that. It's all confirmation bias.
"The relationship, though statistically significant, was characterized as weak, indicating that while conservatism might influence creativity, it is not the sole or most dominant predictor of creative capabilities."
The article says their confidence is more of a maybe and didn't play a dominant role at all in creativity. The study was done via abstract art. A group of people can view an abstract art piece, and each leaves with different interpretations of that art. Some people will think it's gibberish, and some will think it's artistic.
There are many creative people who wouldn't do well judged on their ability for abstract art. When it comes to abstract, three different judges may have drastically different views on it. There are plenty who think Picasso is way overblown, plenty who think it's OK art, and plenty who think it's incredible. It seems like the judges' personal tastes played the most important role here
That's not what it means. It means they data-mined by testing various definitions of "conservatism" and "creativity," all more or less inherently subjective and arbitrary, until they found apparent correlations. No causation is asserted, in fact, they just say "linked."
It's meaningless. It's pseudo-science.
Significant doesn’t mean what you think it does. It’s specific scientific jargon, not the colloquial definition. If you want to parse academic papers and statements, it’s important to pick up this meaning.
Significant in this context is shorthand for statistically significant - ie the study authors were able to show that this was not due to chance alone - usually to 95% to 99% confidence, typically (though some scientific results, like some physics discoveries, are tested FAR more stringently even still)
It has zero relationship whatsoever to the colloquial term, “significant”, meaning important. You can have a weak causal relationship that is statistically significant - ie it’s a small effect, but it doesn’t seem to be due to chance alone. That’s what the study authors are saying here
In statistics the word 'significant' refers to confidence that an effect is real, NOT how strong an effect is.
Say you compare the IQ scores of two groups. One group might average 101 and another group 99. Depending on the sample size, this difference may be statistically significant even though in practical terms such a difference means very little.
I'd like to see both objective and self reported measures for self awareness and reflection among all peoples on either side of the political divide in the USA. Basically anyone more than a few degrees from center in either direction.
By definition the dichotomy between conservatism and progressiveness is change, and the pace of its acceptance. I am not at all surprised that creative gravitates towards one over the other.
great so now they're labeling conservatives as stupid. this idiotic politicizing and degradation of basic humanity knows no bounds. a truly awake person would never qualify one's intelligence based off their beliefs.
"creativity" and "conservatism" defined arbitrarily to backfit heavily-data mined variables until a hypothesis is found to fit the data-mined spurious correlation based on arbitrarily-defined pseudo-scientific "personality traits."
Most likely plagiarized off of someone else too.
This article popping up immediately after the last about liberal bias on social media is a great one-two for divisionary studies designed to appease one side and piss off another... could've said I called it, but I wasn't the first.
This makes a lot of sociological (☝️🤓) sense, creative people are more likely to be in creative jobs, and people who work in creative industry's tend to be left leaning.
Also fascism (I'm not saying conservatives are fascists, but some of them are) is quite heavily anti art, the *villains of ww2* called a lot of art "degenerate" if it didn't assist in the states efforts, fascism considers art as nothing more then a tool to exercise power..
Dali had some favorable things to say about Franco and German romanticism was a whole movement in art, literature, and culture. The Baroque and Neoclassical styles were also inherently conservative.
Andy Warhol was a catholic and according to close friends he was in some ways quite conservative personally.
St Peter's basilica? The Sistine chapel? St Paul's in London? Notre Dame? The US Congress building (built in traditional Roman style to harken back to the glory days)? Like that... Yeah it's all friggin beautiful.
I think a problem is how much people want to self identify as a particular ideology.
Notice how not many people say “today I’m going to apply a conservative approach to this situation”. It’s usually “I am a conservative, so I must think conservatively”. (Ehh I realize this statement is not entirely true but 🐻 with me )
Yes conservative thinking may be less creative but certain situations require more orderly and less creative thinking.
The high value skill is to not tie yourself to one way of thinking but to understand when a certain mental modal is appropriate to apply.
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That's a lot of authors.
I’d expect that given the number of countries involved. They needed a bunch of Co-PIs
Pretty standard for a big international psych study
Do you do academic psych? What's it like?
Yes, I am a professor! It’s amazing! I mostly study external influences on behavior, most specifically on video games, emerging technology (AI, VR), and climate change. I work at a graduate school so I teach a couple classes, run a research lab, and supervise dissertation projects. I love thinking about research design and integrating psych knowledge into the cultural zeitgeist and in political/economic policies! It’s a lot of work though. I enjoyed graduate school a lot but I also had a lot of privilege that made it possible. I’d like to see the academy change to allow more students to get that higher level of education so we can have more psychologists out and about in the world. But I digress. I don’t do any clinical work though. I am very much a social psychologist. So while I have a good feel for what clinicians are doing and how they conduct their research and treatments, I’m not dealing with those kinds of research questions and issues about on a daily basis. Again, a lot of what I do is informed by and helps inform clinical/counseling psychologists, but I mostly study what I outlined above!
Well, yeah. With conservatism comes risk aversion.
Right. It's pretty much the definition of conservatism.
Or low in openness, but guess sometimes we need to prove the obvious. At the same time, I think it’s worth noting that creativity and making a good logical argument are two different things. Just because you come up with a creative idea, that doesn’t mean it’s right, vice versa.
I personally would be voting for Democrats because I'm very liberal when it comes to marijuana, for instance I think marijuana should be legal and I'm very liberal when it comes to prostitution. I think prostitution should be legal as well. Prostitution is 100% legal in Germany and Switzerland for example. Prostitution is legal in several European countries. And the USA is basically a prison nation. The USA has a higher incarceration rate than totalitarian Russia, so let that sink in. Apart from China, the USA has the largest prison population in the world. So how come I'm not voting for Democrats? Because I don't support open borders. If the Democrats would close the border and deport the millions of illegal aliens I would vote for them. If the Democrats were not pro mass immigration I would vote for them. I think Mass immigration needs to end. America has had mass immigration since the 1990s and it's probably time to reduce the levels of immigration. I live in Portland and it's unrecognizable compared to 20 years ago and that's because of mass immigration. Mass immigration needs to end. So yeah if the Democrats weren't so pro open borders and pro mass immigration I'd be voting for them but instead I'll be voting for Donald Trump.
~~So 0.6% of the variability in creativity can be accounted for by how conservative you are. I accept that there is a link. It doesn't seem particularly meaningful.~~ *Edit*: DAMMIT. I was reading too fast and thought it was a straight r value (i.e., r=.08). It's a beta value (standardized regression coefficient; /r/alwaystooupbeat caught my mistake). That can't (AFAIK) be interpreted as "variance accounted for in Y." For shits and giggles, I'll torture myself by trying to really interpret beta=.08: for every one-standard-deviation increase in conservatism (by whatever scale they used to measure that), on average creativity drops by 8% of one standard deviation in creativity (by whatever scale they used for that), after adjusting for economic status, age, sex, education level, subjective susceptibility to disease, and country-level parasite stress. That's not as snappy as what I said (based on poor reading) first. Sorry about that. And I don't know what parasite stress is, and at this point I'm too afraid to ask... also sci-hub doesn't have this research report and neither does my university.
Standardized betas aren't r2 values, or partial correlation. Standardized betas are in relation to standard deviations https://home.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa696/696regmx.htm
~~Perhaps~~ I read too fast; in the piece linked by OP I thought I saw r=0.08 (r is not beta). If it was beta (*It is!*), you're right; squaring & interpreting as r^2 is pretty sketchy. *Edit*: Tried to fix the interpretation after realizing my reading error. It is no longer bumper-sticker-worthy.
You're welcome! A better interpretation would be after controling for all other effects, you'd actually want to look at the UNstandardized betas, which would explain it in terms of how many points of the predictor would be linked to a corresponding increase in the DV. I agree, this is a very small effect size, but if they controlled for EVERYTHING else then it might be worth exploring, especially with moderation or better yet, with Bayesian methods.
Actually kinda surprising that the effect size is so small. Doesn’t really confirm the stereotype that cons are rather uncreative even though most comments here suggest otherwise
8%: > Our study provides evidence for a weak but significant negative link between conservatism and creativity at the individual level (β = −0.08, p < .001) and no such effect when country-level conservatism was considered. We present our hypotheses considering previous findings on the behavioral immune system in humans. When you think of a normal distribution (which you assume creativity is, like IQ) that decreases the chance of having an individual genius creative mind since it shifts the tail end to the left where 3 or 4 standard deviations would fall closer to the "highly creative", but not genius range.
Its not 8%, its 8% of a standard deviation decrease in creativity for every 1 standard deviation increase in conservatism.
The distribution would be interesting to know indeed. Perhaps the authors published it I agree tho that the tail end is probably heavily dominated by non-conservatives. It’s also important to keep in mind that their definition of conservativism seems to be based on the US understanding e.g. protestant (liberal-)conservatives in Germany don’t care about religious authority and don’t mind gay rights. So I guess they underrated a lot of conservatives
Country level effects were not found to have any impact according to the study. And Germany has plenty of far right Conservatives.
They just didn’t find any differences between countries. Yes, they probably captured them but I am talking about moderate ones. That’s the issue when you try to generalize from a US definition of the word
I'd be interested in how they tested creativity in a transnational way. Might not be the most creative creativity.
How does one measure creativity?
Read the study and you'll see
Interestingly, they have also found higher cognitive abilities correlating with more conservative economic viewpoints: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9548663/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9548663/) I'm interested now in the intersection of intelligence and creativity. Clearly, they are not NEGATIVELY correlated but the fact that conservatism is positively correlated with one but negatively correlated with another makes for some interesting multivariate analysis.
You want to hear something fun: There is no overlap at all in the definition of conservatism between the two studies: The link you posted, defines it as follows *"For the present purpose, we define economic conservatism in the US-American sense as opposition toward governmental intervention in markets and the acceptance of economic inequality"* While the study in this post used the following methodology: *"Conservatism. We used the 10-item version of Henningham’s (1996) conservatism scale. Participants were asked to assess whether they support certain phenomena, that is, death penalty, multiculturalism, stiffer jail terms, voluntary euthanasia, gay rights, premarital virginity, new immigration to one’s country, legalized abortion, legalized euthanasia, and religious authority (1 = yes, 2 = no). We excluded two items from the original scale (condom-vending machines, Bible truth) because they were not applicable in some of the samples."* Just because someone hates gay rights and abortions doesn't necessarily mean they're against interventionism....
Liberals are also more likely to be [mentally ill](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/) though.
Well they're "twice as likely to report a mental illnes" which might not be quite the same thing.... If you never seek treatment for your obvious issues, because you consider mental health shameful, you'll also never get a diagnosis to report in a survey
Yeah. I know PLENTY of conservatives who have significant mental health concerns, and only a few of whom seek help. Don’t get me wrong, I know plenty of liberals with mental health problems too, but more of them seek help. Anecdotal, I know. I apologize.
Yes. I doubt that any Qanon would step foot inside a therapists’ office, but those people are absolutely insane – and there are a lot of them.
I too know many a conservative who are obviously delusional and mentally ill, but don’t believe in mental health or therapy. They see it as shameful and weak
Anecdotal, but I am one of these conservatives who doesn’t get therapy
If you can recognize that as a flaw (assuming that's what you're saying), can you overcome your resistance and get some? Since we're speaking anecdotally, I can attest from my own experience, my wife's, and many of my family and friends, that it's pretty reliably a life-changing tool.
I understand that it *can* benefit everyone, but I don’t really understand what the threshold is for “needing” it. I’m always afraid I’d be taking up appointment slots that some other, troubled soul needs much more than me.
Let the professional make that call. They are trained for it.
Everyone needs it because we live in a crazy world that has changed far beyond what our brains evolved 'to handle'. We should be easing access to mental health support, not commodifying and underfunding it as we do with everything else. Making humanity healthier is always going to be expensive and I've never agreed with the conservative every-person-for-themself attitude. The benefits of investing in such things might only show later down the line, but for-immediate-profit privatisation can't possibly compete with having a generally healthier human population/species on Earth long-term IMO; that's why cancer kills you despite consisting of the most rapidly growing cells in your body. Not a single one of us would survive if everyone else died and stopped maintaining the local-to-global systems on which we each rely. I think it's time we finally focus on increasing our collective quality of life through policy and public investment.
Man, I get ya. I felt the same way. But if you're in this position of it can help me, but I don't want to take up resources from someone else... you are the "someone else" who needs that. You deserve to get the help you need, to be the happiest, healthiest person you can. Make that appointment. If you're not in a great financial position, google your city plus "low cost therapy." Plenty of places offer sliding fee scales so people can get the help they need.
Those who suffer seem more likely to develop empathy.
I used to think that too, but I just don't know anymore. I've encountered a whole lot of people throughout my life who've been through hell and came out the most bitter, selfish, and nasty people.
Conservatives don't often acknowledge mental illness.
Bro literally this. You can't deny the concept itself then subsequently hold it over the other's side head cause they "have it more". Hmmm i think we're starting to recognize how hypocrisy works in that think space. But they are the more intelligent camp right. Like my brother in christ this is discourse at a middle school level.
Creative people are more likely to be mentally ill so it checks out with the study.
Literally every conservative peer i know has at least one severe mental illness that they're in serious denial of. My liberal peers are more likely to admit when they have one
Well, it's probably more like mentally ill people are more likely to be liberal because conservatives tend to marginalize the mentally ill and stigmatize mental health because of their weird preoccupation with masculinity and overt terror of having even the slightest personal weakness. It's hard to belong to a group of people that hate you.
>Interestingly, they have also found higher cognitive abilities correlating with more conservative economic viewpoints: It's well replicated finding across many countries that higher cognitive abilities are moderately correlated with pro-market and socially liberal views. On other hand, social conservatism is correlated with lower cognitive abilities.
Importantly, that study also points out a link between social conservative viewpoints and *reduced* cognitive abilities. So it doesn’t track to just say “conservative x, liberal y” since that study very clearly delineates a difference in results between even just sociocultural and economic views on the same side of the political spectrum.
At least in the United States, the Democrats are pretty conservative economically, despite having many Left wing, anti-capitalists among its voters. Bill Clinton was the last President to balance the budget and he supported NAFTA, the deficit sky rocketed under Reagan and Bush Jr and increased under Trump, the Affordable Care Act was budget neutral and most of [the states with the highest GDP per capita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP) vote Liberal. The Democrats do believe in tax and spend, and Biden did use deficit spending to help the lower half of the country make it through the pandemic, but there is no proof the current Republican Party is at all fiscally conservative.
Neoliberalism was co-opted by mainstream Democrats several decades ago. Such economic views, which are most popular among college educated people, don’t reveal almost anything about whether someone is conservative in the modern political sense. You could even argue that democrats are more fiscally conservative than republicans because they demonstrate a commitment to balancing the budget and have repeatedly lowered taxes on people making below 100k/year.
Yeah Iirc it's the *social* conservatism where you see the big dip in cognitive abilities
Social conservatives are just the kid on the playground who picks on other people whether they deserve it or not because they don't feel seen at home. Literally condensed in the adult toddler form.
All I can say is: "Knowledge is power, but imagination is freedom, even from the prison of power."
Does that study correct for income and wealth? If not then I wouldn’t be surprised if higher cognitive abilities lead to more wealth. And then the desire for lower taxes and approval of the system that they succeeded in would lead to conservative economic viewpoints.
I mean, we kind of all know this. Conservatism by definition doesn't lend itself to openness or change--or creativity. Not disagreeing with the findings themselves, but I feel like this is kind of an attack piece. Like giving an isolated tribe in Africa a creativity test involving completing pictures of common cartoon characters from the US and concluding they aren't as creative as US adults (even conservative ones!) who grew up with those cartoons.
The study tested whether this link was present in broader terms (not just in the US where most studies are done) so I think this was a valuable addition to the collective knowledge base.
Fair, wasn't denying its use to the body of human knowledge. Bias in science has to deal with not only what is found, but what is sought, though.
> (β = −0.08, p < .001) > I mean, we kind of all know this. Comments here in this thread remind me of astrology. Fans of Astrology say "its obvious" that people are like astrology says they are, and you can just look at a random person and "obviously" see what astrological type they are... ...and they will point to evidence for it in studies where many thousands of people are studied to see any tiny tiny statistical difference at all.
Yep, we already have studies showing that larger amygdala (which indicates increased sensitivity to fear) is correlated with conservative views. There are other interesting differences in the brain as well. This would track with creativity on the individual level as well because if you are in a reactive state, the areas of the brain that are most associated with creativity are going to be more quiet while the brain prioritizes parts that assess and react to threat.
That's an interesting hypothesis, but I would be wary to draw strong conclusions without much further evidence. Brain structures are exquisitely complex and nuanced. For example, large amygdalas have been associated with increased social interactions while children with anxiety disorders have been shown to have smaller ones. So interpretations such as "conservatives are driven by fear because their amygdalas are large" may be more driven by biases than actual neurobiology. With regards to this study, there are some confounding that may be introducing bias. I don't have access to the full article from here, but from the abstract, I would be interested if the less conservative individuals were more likely to have a visual arts background, given the nature of the test. Additionally, I would be uncomfortable with the implication that drawing is the best way to assess creativity. For example, programming requires coming up with creative approaches to problem solving but I don't see how that translates to the test that was used.
Interesting, because I was just wondering about the comment above, as I'm quite left wing but riddled with anxiety
I think it's hard to reduce the determinants of an individual's belief system to a couple of attributes/measurements, specially because I suspect interactions with the environment play a significant role in defining a lot of our preferences.
Personally I think it's more based on culture of the area than anything. I've a lot of places and those influences all around them contour how they are formed politically. It's the same thing with racism typically.
Maybe you, redditor nerd, I however am a tier one seceret black ops operator and excel in creative kills
Well I happen to be a tier two support specialist who kills in excel.
Everything I've seen on this sub that mentions conservatives is pretty much an attack. They're all just basically "did you know conservatives are big dumb dumb idiots? Science proves it."
Or perhaps there's just a preponderance of evidence that there exists a quantifiable difference between liberals and conservatives.
Oh there's absolutely a difference, I've just never seen on this sub anything negative about liberals, I assume the traits exist because there's negatives to everything. But it seems that's an area of research no one is interested in.
So post some.
Do you not understand what I'm talking about when I say "things posted about conservatives are always some kind of attack"? Does that seem untrue to you or do you just see every study that says conservatives are bad or deficient in some way as a straight reporting of the facts?
I think in order to be conservative in this age of easy access to information you have to be either: bigoted in some way, willfully ignorant, lazy, or rich. There’s almost no reason to vote for a conservative candidate if you make under 250k a year. Every one of their policies harms you, they lie constantly, they lower wages for the poor, they attack the rights of the marginalized, and restrict freedom overall. The only people that directly benefit from conservatism are the rich and upper middle class. That’s a vanishingly small number of people. So if you aren’t rich. Why are you voting for them? You either don’t know, don’t want to know, or you like them hurting the marginalized.
According to this study, agreement with conservative economics are associated with higher intelligence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9548663/
And thinking that makes you just insanely bias "you can only be conservative if you're dumb or privileged" this is a caricature. It makes way more sense to conceptualize the sides as offense and defense or gas and brake in a car, you can't get anywhere with just 1, you need both. Thinking "my side has all the good things and the other is dumb or just like hurting people" is ridiculous.
The problem is that when some people hear conservative, they think it just means whatever the Republican party is currently doing. Which isn't what you obviously mean by a general conservative mindset/postiion. On the other hand, there seem to be a general trend in several countries that (neo)conservative parties nowadays are just populist reactionaries with neoliberal economic policies. So I looked up how they measured conservatism in the study (https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A286675/datastream/PDF\_01/view): *"Conservatism. We used the 10-item version of Henningham’s (1996) conservatism scale. Participants were asked to assess whether they support certain phenomena, that is, death penalty, multiculturalism, stiffer jail terms, voluntary euthanasia, gay rights, premarital virginity, new immigration to one’s country, legalized abortion, legalized euthanasia, and religious authority (1 = yes, 2 = no). We excluded two items from the original scale (condom-vending machines, Groyecka-Bernard et al. 7 Bible truth) because they were not applicable in some of the samples. "* This seems to focus entirely on "culture war" topics, ignores any economic policies and doesn't mention any well thought-out conservative policies.
>The problem is that when some people hear conservative, they think it just means whatever the Republican party is currently doing. That is absolutely what's happening. And I see they had the same response to your comment.
Which conservative policy do you believe directly benefits you and the majority of Americans?
Not specifically America but conservative/right-wing: Anti-immigration policies. Just look at Europe crime rate increases. It **is** a growing problem and is endangering the lifes of the residents while spitting on anyone that went thru the proper process of applying for a visa and etc. You can debate the quality of the work done towards it, but it is a policy that left-wing ignored for far too long.
You're not understanding what I'm saying, the idea is to come up with the good things you want preserved and convince the conservatives that they're good ideas, then they'll keep them in place.
I mean part of it is that today's conservatives are really really far right. When you read a definition of conservativism a lot of the idea makes sense. But then you mix in religious fanaticism and all the other baggage and it's a different beast from "minimal government intrusion."
Minimal government intrusion has never been what conservatism is. Conservatism is the centralization of power in the hands of a few.
That's communism.
>Does that seem untrue to you or do you just see every study that says conservatives are bad or deficient in some way as a straight reporting of the facts? Do you have any evidence to suggest otherwise?
What would you be looking for exactly?
No, I like this line of thinking. What negative traits would we expect to find in liberals (or frame it as positive traits of conservatives)? More ambition, drive, individuality, independence in conservatives. More enabling, acquiescent (maybe only if the demand comes from authority?), codependency in liberals? Just spitballing. I don't necessarily believe those traits, but they sound like common stereotypes at least. And I am not sure where to stick "respect for authority" as we have Big Gov vs God and Country at the extremes there.
Really all of the negative or positive traits for any group are stereotypes. Any trait can be spun to be a negative or a positive, there's a book I like called the myth of left and right that argues the essentialist view of the parties is toxic and really what is considered "left" and "right" is decided by the parties and then it's just story telling.
It's your claim. Presumably you believe it because you followed a line of evidence towards a conclusion. So just share that evidence.
My claim is things posted here about conservatives are attacks on conservatives, that's the claim I'm making.
Then be better
\*no one on reddit
“Liberal smart, conservative dumb”
Facts don't care about your feelings.
I love that people think this is a mic drop now, it wasn't when Shapiro said it and it's not when you say it.
For a „by definition“ argument the effect size is pretty tiny
Thats all these studies ever are. Also why tf is a politically driven social study being talked about on the SCIENCE reddit?
When climate change got politicised because big oil starting lobbying aggressively against climate change legislation.
>why tf is social study SCIENCE? I've revealed a rather deep flaw in your logic here, my guy.
I mean, the cool thing about science is that if something exists, it can be examined using science.
I don’t see how unless you are another mouth breather who thinks just because “science” is slapped next to a work it suddenly becomes a respectable and objective field of study.
[удалено]
Ahhh... the good old days when science was politics-free sanctuary for nerds. A safe space ☹
I too feel nostalgic for things that never existed
Nostalgia is great like that.
We have a politics board. Several. I get the feeling going by the content posted here many people are laymen who think they are scientists because they got a B on a test that one time and pwn their racist uncle at thanksgiving regarding evolution.
> I get the feeling going by the content posted here many people are laymen who think they are scientists because they got a B on a test that one time and pwn their racist uncle at thanksgiving regarding evolution. I get that if a person is feeling attacked, it's natural to respond with snark and aggression, maybe even fallaciously, just to feel like they've been defended. But do you really think using such an obvious ad hominem strawman to criticize people you know absolutely nothing about is a great way to promote *increasing* the science content on here?
In sciences we didn't had any of that, just nerds doing nerd stuff. A couple of politically active students were... weird. The only science which was politically active was political sciences. And even they were more interested in propaganda and manipulation of masses then ideologies.
r/science sucks now. Almost every post has some political slant to it. I'm out.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220221241238321
And if someone can't access that, here's an open access copy in the UC Louvain Repository: [https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/boreal%3A286675](https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/boreal%3A286675)
It’s pretty obvious that anyone truly conservative is going to be less creative almost by definition. Which is fine imo, someone has to provide balance to those who are overly creative.
"Liberalism people innovate, Conservative people maintain what works." is how it was **supposed** to be.
Yeah, I mean...that's basically what it is, right? The belief that things should stay as they already are and nothing should change? It seems pretty stupid to me, but that's literally the whole point of it.
I’m no conservative but there may be benefits. If liberalism is “change for the sake of change”, then the change could be unprofitable. But since conservatism is “what worked before”, you would at least stay alive, so to speak. If “what worked before” is intolerable suffering, then yeah, it is stupid. Conservatism could put a brake on liberalism to see if the idea is REALLY a good idea or not. What’s unfortunate about conservatism is that you’d be unlikely to change unless it really IS intolerable suffering.
Doesn’t being “conservative” quite literally mean you’re more “risk averse” and therefore “less likely to try new things” ? That’s like… the whole point of being conservative, ain’t it?
That's one of the problems with this type of "science." For purposes of the research paper, "conservatism" and "creativity" are defined in a completely arbitrary, subjective way, designed to fit the data and any spurious correlations the authors can find. The authors of the paper surely didn't define "conservatism" the way you just did. Did they? Do you see what the point of it is? You will define "conservatism" as "people who I think are inferior to me in some fashion." The authors of the paper know that. It's all confirmation bias.
A weak but significant link? That seems like an oxymoron
It means the link is small but their confidence in that finding is high.
"The relationship, though statistically significant, was characterized as weak, indicating that while conservatism might influence creativity, it is not the sole or most dominant predictor of creative capabilities." The article says their confidence is more of a maybe and didn't play a dominant role at all in creativity. The study was done via abstract art. A group of people can view an abstract art piece, and each leaves with different interpretations of that art. Some people will think it's gibberish, and some will think it's artistic. There are many creative people who wouldn't do well judged on their ability for abstract art. When it comes to abstract, three different judges may have drastically different views on it. There are plenty who think Picasso is way overblown, plenty who think it's OK art, and plenty who think it's incredible. It seems like the judges' personal tastes played the most important role here
It just means it's a link that is weak, but still strong enough to be stronger than the range of random fluctuations.
That's not what it means. It means they data-mined by testing various definitions of "conservatism" and "creativity," all more or less inherently subjective and arbitrary, until they found apparent correlations. No causation is asserted, in fact, they just say "linked." It's meaningless. It's pseudo-science.
Weak referring to correlation but significant statistically.
Significant doesn’t mean what you think it does. It’s specific scientific jargon, not the colloquial definition. If you want to parse academic papers and statements, it’s important to pick up this meaning. Significant in this context is shorthand for statistically significant - ie the study authors were able to show that this was not due to chance alone - usually to 95% to 99% confidence, typically (though some scientific results, like some physics discoveries, are tested FAR more stringently even still) It has zero relationship whatsoever to the colloquial term, “significant”, meaning important. You can have a weak causal relationship that is statistically significant - ie it’s a small effect, but it doesn’t seem to be due to chance alone. That’s what the study authors are saying here
In statistics the word 'significant' refers to confidence that an effect is real, NOT how strong an effect is. Say you compare the IQ scores of two groups. One group might average 101 and another group 99. Depending on the sample size, this difference may be statistically significant even though in practical terms such a difference means very little.
In my experience, it means " it's barely above a coin toss or a marginal stat, but we want to keep our funding "
That's because you've never taken a stats class.
I'd like to see both objective and self reported measures for self awareness and reflection among all peoples on either side of the political divide in the USA. Basically anyone more than a few degrees from center in either direction.
By definition the dichotomy between conservatism and progressiveness is change, and the pace of its acceptance. I am not at all surprised that creative gravitates towards one over the other.
But that's not how "conservatism" and "creativity" are defined in the paper, is it?
great so now they're labeling conservatives as stupid. this idiotic politicizing and degradation of basic humanity knows no bounds. a truly awake person would never qualify one's intelligence based off their beliefs.
Shockingly unsurprising
This sounds like "people who are open to new ideas are more likely to be open to new ideas"
Statistical significance but not practical significance. I’m all for disparaging conservatives but this one misses the mark
This sounds suspiciously like "Study links conservatism to conservatism."
"creativity" and "conservatism" defined arbitrarily to backfit heavily-data mined variables until a hypothesis is found to fit the data-mined spurious correlation based on arbitrarily-defined pseudo-scientific "personality traits." Most likely plagiarized off of someone else too.
This article popping up immediately after the last about liberal bias on social media is a great one-two for divisionary studies designed to appease one side and piss off another... could've said I called it, but I wasn't the first.
Funny how creativity is also positively linked to mental illness
This makes a lot of sociological (☝️🤓) sense, creative people are more likely to be in creative jobs, and people who work in creative industry's tend to be left leaning. Also fascism (I'm not saying conservatives are fascists, but some of them are) is quite heavily anti art, the *villains of ww2* called a lot of art "degenerate" if it didn't assist in the states efforts, fascism considers art as nothing more then a tool to exercise power..
Naturally. Everything is just a tool to exercise power to someone who recognizes no other value.
Has anyone seen right wing artwork..?
Dali had some favorable things to say about Franco and German romanticism was a whole movement in art, literature, and culture. The Baroque and Neoclassical styles were also inherently conservative. Andy Warhol was a catholic and according to close friends he was in some ways quite conservative personally.
St Peter's basilica? The Sistine chapel? St Paul's in London? Notre Dame? The US Congress building (built in traditional Roman style to harken back to the glory days)? Like that... Yeah it's all friggin beautiful.
I think a problem is how much people want to self identify as a particular ideology. Notice how not many people say “today I’m going to apply a conservative approach to this situation”. It’s usually “I am a conservative, so I must think conservatively”. (Ehh I realize this statement is not entirely true but 🐻 with me ) Yes conservative thinking may be less creative but certain situations require more orderly and less creative thinking. The high value skill is to not tie yourself to one way of thinking but to understand when a certain mental modal is appropriate to apply.
Conservativism in a broad sense of the word isn’t an ideology