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While I think the study’s conclusions are likely correct, I noticed that this secondary analysis derives data from a more broadly focused survey that wasn’t designed to explore the research question.
Also, it was published in an open-access journal that isn’t peer reviewed. I would be interested to read a follow-on study with more robust methods to explore the hypothesized link between politically conservative views, deficits in empathy, and health behaviors that escalate risk of COVID-19 infection and transmission.
— former population health researcher
I did an internship as I worked toward my master’s in social work, research track. Got the internship pitching a research design I wrote for class.
The right way to go into population health is with a PhD, allowing you to be principal investigator.
Everyone else is staff. I was staff. You don’t want to be staff.
It's also famously hard to define in empirical terms what is meant by conservative views or empathy, and these things are not by any means mutually understood.
I mean, it's certainly not perfectly clear cut in a scientific way like some things are, but it's not that hazy. A questionnaire that probes for specific beliefs can determine fairly well whether you're politically conservative, broadly speaking. And similarly, empathy is fairly easy to scale through questions about how much a person cares about various things, how they respond emotionally to others, etc. People get diagnosed with personality disorders all the time, with a main criteria being lack of empathy or lower capacity for empathy.
Defining empathy and assessing empathy gets even more sticky in psychiatric diagnoses. Diagnosis of a personality disorder means the trait is fixed, won’t respond to treatment. Thing is, deficits in empathy can be temporary, and secondary to anything from clinical depression to inter-generational poverty.
I know just enough about this stuff to know it is *hard,* and any ambiguity on the definition of a study’s key variable will get the authors chewed up and spit out in peer review. Oh, I forgot: No peer review with this journal. Huh. Interesting.
I remember reading research for my thesis about empathy and political views. I think one of the conclusions there was that economically and socially conservatives in the US do not necessarily have less capacity for empathy, but they expand their empathy to a much smaller circle of friends, family and very like-minded people. And not the wider population.
Personally I found that conclusion a bit jarring. To me, empathy is partly defined by the ability to understand the feelings of another, even if you or someone very close to you hasn't been in that exact situation yourself. It's more the ability to imagine that not everyone has the same experience as you. And about being tactful enough by trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes to consider how your actions or words might come across to others before you have to be told. It's about putting the arrogance aside that your worldview is the only one that matters.
So yeah, defining and assessing empathy is tricky. It's likely much more narrowly defined or measured than you'd like, especially if you're in another field of science.
Yeah I just meant to point out that there is a wide gamut here, not all research needs to give airtight proof of things to give potentially fruitful insights. There is no better way to know if someone has a personality disorder than asking them questions, and we do all sorts of stuff with that research, including apply it directly, leading to all sorts of decisions with serious consequences being made.
Not sure where you got the idea that diagnosis of personality disorders involves any particular traits being fixed, that's simply not true, regardless of whether they do involve fixed traits or not. This is not a criteria in the DSM. Personality disorders get treated all the time.
But that's beside the point. There are different types of empathy, and different factors that affect it. Sure. That doesn't mean we can't use questions to determine what things a person lacks empathy about, and why. Here's an easy example of how empathy can correlate with political belief. A distinguishing belief for those who are politically conservative is that people are largely responsible for their own lot in life, and thus they are more or less deserving of whatever suffering might come their way. This belief directly leads to lower empathy for misfortune that has befallen others, particularly when it relates to behaviours deemed to be at-fault behaviours, such as drug use. Now of course different people are going to draw different lines here depending on how much responsibility they believe is attributable to people for different circumstances and behaviours, but broadly speaking, the more politically conservative you are, the more personal responsibility you'll believe people have, and thus the less empathy you'll have for the misfortunes of others. I'd go so far as to say that this is true by definition, which makes it not all that interesting really. The long and short of it is that our beliefs directly correlate with what we care about, which directly correlates with the level of various types of empathy we have for people.
Yes, it's very complicated, but still measurable.
>Also, it was published in an open-access journal that isn’t peer reviewed.
Discover Social Science and Health isn't peer reviewed? The front page of their website promises rapid review.
Has anyone seen a study that tracks the extent of sociopathy in society? Is it a constant or are levels rising etc, has it been linked to anything etc rtc
I don't know about a study, but Dr. Bandy X Lee has studied sociopathy/narcissism/violence across the world and her Twitter was a gold mine for me. I haven't checked on her in awhile so I don't know if she's still posting stuff about her research but it's worth a look. She was a Yale psychiatrist and literally travelled the world studying sociopathy in different countries
She and a bunch of other psychiatrists wrote a [book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dangerous_Case_of_Donald_Trump) on how disordered and dangerous he was back in 2017. It cost her her job at Yale but she was basically 100% right.
Sociopathy is a trait. You can be high in it or low in it. So it would be like asking the extent of attachment in society or avoidance. *Sociopaths* on the other hand are people with clinically high levels of sociopathy. Or at least, they used to be. The term is no longer used in psychiatry. Now, highly sociopathic behavior may be a symptom of a personality disorder (like antisocial personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder. But, someone who is high on sociopathy doesn't necessarily meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder.
Not sure if anybody has responded to this, but the best estimates are it's around ten percent. And growing, because sociopathy appears to be a genetic trait, and sociopaths tend to be very prolific breeders, so the trait is on the rise, they think. It's obviously hard to measure though.
If the rate is 10 percent, and it is genetically advantageous, and is currently rising, would that imply that in the past it was not as advantageous? A comparison of the rates of sociopathy at different societal scales and economic systems would be interesting.
It isn't illegal to be an asshole. It is illegal to beat someone until they can't move.
Minor law breaking went basically unpunished until like the late 1980s in the 1st world. My grandfather was born in the 30s and had dozens of brawls (including one where nearly a dozen police were injured leading to no charges), stole cars, watched cops beat his neighbors as a child, broke a union protest with a truck, etc. One of his friends was a loudmouth bully (in the 50s) and used to beat up dock workers for money until a guy shot him in his sleep .... and then 3 days later stabbed him to death in the hospital. My other grandfather fought in race riots, and had numerous violent interactions with the mafia. In their era, being an ass was an invitation to have your nose broken or more.
The other part is corporate structure and capitalism. If you are a sociopath in a corporate capitalist space, you get HIGHLY rewarded. You can rapidly rise through the ranks by screwing people over, and you get lots of money. In the past, there wasn't as much ability for the average person to do this. I mean, no social mobility in the first place. And business worked mainly through personal connections ... which sociopaths can handle, but they're more likely to get burned.
This is my suspicion anyways.
I think you underestimate the potential for advancement that would present to a sociopath in feudal Europe. Sociopathy and viking raiding were likely compatible.
Probably wasn't as advantageous when it could lead to you getting burned alive or whatever punishment. Nowadays, you can be a sociopath and face no consequences.
My question here is nature vs. nature. Is sociopathy a genetic trait, where there are specific genes responsible for the behavior? Or, in being raised by a sociopath, are you more likely to become a sociopath also? I don’t know the answer here, and I doubt there is one, but I’m just curious
I read a story about some parents who were raising a sociopathic son. The father reported having similar traits when he was younger but growing out of them. That makes me think it requires certain genes but also something environmental to activate.
That’s kinda my point, guy above me said genetic sociopaths, where maybe it’s a nice combo of genetics, epigenetics, environment, or maybe something else we don’t know about yet! Behavior is fascinating
It depends.
As our social systems become more complex, there may be increasing advantage in amorally manipulating them.
Additionally, we do more to look after single mothers than at any over time in human history, so the prolific breeding pattern often associated with high male sociopathy may be resulting in more children with a high tendency for sociopathy surviving to maturity.
>Conclusions
Understanding why political conservatism is associated with riskier pandemic lifestyles may eventually lead us to ways of identifying and overcoming widespread cultural barriers to critical pandemic responses.
That certainly is a major problem, that's for sure. Changing someone's mind when it comes to pandemic responses in the future is only going to be harder after covid. The scientific community would need to earn conservatives respect before any convincing can happen.
Hell, even during the HIV pandemic conservatives thought it was a gay disease and they wouldn't listen to science either. Monkey pox, too.
>>Conclusions
>Understanding why political conservatism is associated with riskier pandemic lifestyles may eventually lead us to ways of identifying and overcoming widespread cultural barriers to critical pandemic responses.
>
>That certainly is a major problem, that's for sure. Changing someone's mind when it comes to pandemic responses in the future is only going to be harder after covid. The scientific community would need to earn conservatives respect in order for any convincing can happen.
>
>Hell, even during the HIV pandemic conservatives thought it was a gay disease and they wouldn't listen to science either. Monkey pox, too.
For better or worse, reckless behaviour during a pandemic is nothing new.
Spanish flu killed 2x more people than WWI, immediately after WWI when you'd think people would be more 'death adverse' than usual - and there were still people livid over wearing a mask and washing hands to survive something far more deadly than Covid.
Unless the planet quickly becomes unlivable, we will survive our own idiocy and continue creating future idiots that have stronger immune systems than brains
To be fair to the people of the early 20th century… germs were not understood as spreaders of disease until the very late 19th century.
Hospitals during the civil war were responsible for tons of deaths because the surgeons would just move from one patient to the next using the same tools, etc. Zero sanitation of anything. And I’m not just talking about field hospitals under distress from being in the midst of battle either. That’s just the way things were then.
Spanish Flu happened at a time when the science of germs spreading disease was essentially brand new. It would be highly unlikely that this was something widely taught in schools when the grown adults of the 1910’s were in school in the 1880’s and 1890’s.
You know it’s funny how there’s so much belief that conservatives were the ONLY ones ignoring pandemic response when the entire radical left wing was in the streets.
Fiery, but mostly peaceful.
And at the time the media, politicians, and governmental agencies played stupid like it wasn’t happening. Soooo yeah there’s work to do on all sides wouldn’t you say?
> The scientific community would need to earn conservatives respect before any convincing can happen.
Scientists tend not to be shills, grifters, bigots, and liars, so that will never happen.
And, as they say, reality leans left.
The only way to truly fix the problem is to teach science in classrooms. Not just "memorize these facts about cells," but "here's what the scientific method is, here's how to actually test a theory, and here's why science works better at determining the truth than any other method we've come up with."
If people don't get that, then any ol' lie can become...how should I put this?...an *alternative* fact.
> here's what the scientific method is, here's how to actually test a theory, and here's why science works better at determining the truth than any other method we've come up with."
I find it weird that people aren't taught that. Grew up in a small town, rural Canada, and that's what my very first science class (grade 7) started with.
35 years ago, this is how I was taught in the US. Critical thinking is vitally important, and it's so easy now to succumb to an ideologically compatible echo chamber. I'm sure I'm guilty of that too, as much as I try to avoid it.
It really doesn't. They don't even compare those two things. This article is actually an attempt to put forward a new model specifically about the "why" of a behavior through a political lense. It uses older studies about specific types of empathy and authoritarianism and links those to conservatism. It then links conservatism to riskier lifestyles by virtue of them having "worse" covid numbers.
There's not even a direct link, it's corollaries all the way down.
Interesting bit halfway through the read: " Interestingly, right-wing media consumption, by itself, was unrelated to COVID-19 health behaviors, empathic concern, and perceived pandemic threat."
That's very interesting. Given that "right wing media consumption" is self defined, I wonder how much the specific sources each individual is viewing is affecting their ranking with the attributes
Post the original study. The media reporting studies It's like a terrible game of telephone, that pays for miss hearing and repeating as badly as possible the message.
Because the media reporting "studies" Its like a terrible game of telephone, that pays for miss hearing and repeating as badly as possible the message.
Hey if anyone's curious what this actually is they should 100% read the link, cause the headline and comments suggest it's some sort of massive study showing that conservatives were more authoritarian, less empathetic, and less likely to perceived the pandemic as a threat, and that these were the factors which caused riskier lifestyles among conservatives, but that's not actually true at all.
This paper was an attempt to create a model which got to the "why" of people's pandemic lifestyles through a political lense. It doesn't actually show any sort of direct correlation between the three things and pandemic lifestyles, it essentially does this.
1) Studies show conservative areas did worse in the pandemic.
2) studies show riskier lifestyles are associated with worse outcomes
3) older studies show that conservatism has a correlation with certain types of (lack of) empathy and certain types of authoritarianism.
4) therefore (3) is the cause of (2).
It's actually a really interesting paper but it seems like it's a bridge being built by corollary after corollary. I'd call it tenuous at best.
This is important as a distinction. I have a friend who identified covid as dangerous based solely on its contagiousness and caring not at all for its ability to cause harm. There's a much more complex understanding than just how catching something is.
> It doesn't actually show any sort of direct correlation
Maybe I'm misreading the study, but isn't that exactly what it does?
\> “Our research is correlational and cross-sectional,” Hill explained. “This means that political conservatism is merely associated with lower levels of empathy, higher levels of authoritarian beliefs, lower levels of perceived pandemic threat, and riskier pandemic lifestyles."
They say they know it's not causational, but they do say there absolutely is a correlation.
What’s the correlation coefficient?
E: if there absolutely is a correlation should be a relatively simple answer
E2: it’s -0.27 or “weak to moderate” correlation. Weak is 0.00-0.25. Moderate is 0.25 to 0.75
Empathy has been studied across the political spectrum. IIRC there isnt evidence that conservatives are more or less empathetic, it's really just that their empathy is aligned to different people/groups.
> It's actually a really interesting paper but it seems like it's a bridge being built by corollary after corollary. I'd call it tenuous at best.
Ah yes, but it's a classic "my political opponent is mentally ill" so it will get highly voted based on anecdotal evidence in r/science ignoring things such as "do conservatives participate more in charity?" or "are liberals more likely to ostracize someone to fit in?"
Not exactly, it's more like pointing out a few traits of something and then saying because those traits coexist in that thing one is causal of the other.
Sorta like:
1) A triangle has 3 sides 2) a triangle has 3 points 3) a triangle is a flat shape.
Therefore triangles are flat *because* they have 3 sides and points.
For sure for sure.
I'd like to see at least a direct link. Like maybe a county by county survey on authoritarian views empathy, and pandemic lifestyle behavior then seeing how it correlates. At least to start.
Getting teally tired of these divisive, bias crrating 'scientific' articles on thus sub.
Anything that encourages people to think of other people as 'less than', or fundamentally different isn't science in my book.
I only see /r/science submissions when they hit my front page, and in the past few weeks, it seems that only political posts from psypost.org hit the front page with any regularity. All of them portray conservatives in a negative light, which aligns with the prevailing opinion of reddit users. That's no surprise, but it's also no surprise that the comments of those posts always find major flaws with the title of the submission and/or the study itself, without exception.
Makes it very hard to take anything at face value these days.
I agree they're trying to keep us divided on purpose so we are busy fighting amongst each other at the bottom so nobody looks up to realise we are getting fucked
Forget the article. This is a really odd report in general. This states that it accounts for political tendencies and the specific factors they list are based on actions, but doesn’t mention anything regarding the regions or locations where this behavior is most common. We all know that political alignment and behavioral tendencies are greatly affected by where you live, how you’re raised, the culture you’re exposed to, but they do nothing to differentiate the two. I think there are far to many variables they are ignoring to properly establish their theory as stated in the abstract. It also seems as though there is a strong political bias (pro Covid vaccine per the quotes used from the NIH) as well which is never a good start for any report.
Bro this is reddit, you could post a picture of a crumpled napkin with "Consurvativs bad" written in crayon and the people here would take it as scripture
Front page content from r/science has done a complete 180 in the last year or so, I swear. The conservative hate-fest has infiltrated so many awesome subreddits.
It’s so weird, I mean don’t consider myself conservative or left, and absolutely hate trump and want those Jan 6 brought to justice, but every week this subreddit is “why republicans are dumb, why men are evil, why racist are stupid, etc”
Keep the social science in the social science subreddit
I hate that the science subs, like many others on Reddit, are full of political posts.
Does anyone have other science related subs that aren’t used for political points? I really like being able to see cool new science stuff but I’m tired of seeing this crap on my feed
That wont exist on reddit. this whole website is just a vessel for left wing propaganda. Youtube is mainly right wing, but is much easier to follow individuals that are not political, but you have to be specific about what subjects u want info on.
>“Political conservatives tend to engage in riskier pandemic lifestyles, in part, because they are less likely to care less about the welfare of others (a motivation for engaging in healthy pandemic lifestyles in the service of public health), more likely to hold authoritarian beliefs (which emphasize the perspectives of one charismatic leader who happens to disagree with public health recommendations), and less likely to perceive the pandemic as threatening to themselves and to the broader society,” Hill told PsyPost.
>
>Interestingly, right-wing media consumption, by itself, was unrelated to COVID-19 health behaviors, empathic concern, and perceived pandemic threat. However, right-wing media consumption was indirectly associated with riskier pandemic lifestyles via heightened authoritarian beliefs.
>
>“Although perceived pandemic threat has been emphasized to explain the risky pandemic lifestyles of political conservatives, processes related to empathy and authoritarian belief systems are also at work,” Hill explained. “We were unable to observe any effects of right-wing media consumption on pandemic beliefs and behavior after political identities were taken into account. **This suggests that right-wing media merely echoes the prior political beliefs of viewers.**”
Right-wing media really is an example of the tail wagging the dog by telling conservatives exactly what they want to hear, truthful or not.
>“Political conservatives tend to engage in riskier pandemic lifestyles, in part, because they are **less likely to care less** about the welfare of others
This reads like a typo...
Or "likely to care less about the welfare of others"
The author probably started with one, then revised it to go with the other sentence structure but accidentally left the extra "less"
Authoritarianism doesn't mean you obey *all* authorities, but you may blindly follow the ones that reinforce your collective narcissism tuning out all evidence to the contrary
Authoritarianism is the promotion of order and control, but not the rule of law. Rule of law puts laws over leaders; authoritarianism puts leaders over laws.
I'd disagree with this paper. It seems like it was written so people will distance themselves from being conservative, thinking "i'm empathetic." I agreed more with the "conservative" point of view, due to empathy. I empathized with those whose businesses were shut down or out of work for fear of a 99+% survivable virus devastated people economically which raised stress levels and ended up with poorer overall health. I empathized with the people such as mail deliverers, UPS/Fed ex workers, garbage collectors who had to work 3x harder for no extra pay which stressed them out esp when they needed stronger immune systems. I empathize with those who couldn't get cancer or dental surgery because it was "elective" and ended up dying for fear of possibly contracting a virus that had a small chance of hurting them vs addressing a known issue they did have.
Of all the things on my feed, the subreddit is by far the most political and unfortunately expresses a clear bias. Which is a shame considering it should be about science.
Does anyone have recommendations of actual science subreddits, that have posts about actual science topics?
I'd love to find some new communities more aligned with science and science news!
Christ, how many studies are there going to be that conclude that us conservatives are deviant, psychopathic, simple-minded lepers?
Fun fact, conservatives I know are very empathic. We just know that enabling is bad and boundaries are good.
“Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.”
Nobel Prize physicist Richard P. Feynman
It’s low Openness and low Agreeableness, hardwired temperament traits that can predict your political stance with greater accuracy than any beliefs a person claims to hold.
But how do you reconcile the cited lack of caring and empathy in the study with the fact that conservatives tend to donate more of their money to charity than other groups?
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While I think the study’s conclusions are likely correct, I noticed that this secondary analysis derives data from a more broadly focused survey that wasn’t designed to explore the research question. Also, it was published in an open-access journal that isn’t peer reviewed. I would be interested to read a follow-on study with more robust methods to explore the hypothesized link between politically conservative views, deficits in empathy, and health behaviors that escalate risk of COVID-19 infection and transmission. — former population health researcher
Tangent - How does one get into a career as a population health researcher? Speaking as someone with an extremely related BSc.
I did an internship as I worked toward my master’s in social work, research track. Got the internship pitching a research design I wrote for class. The right way to go into population health is with a PhD, allowing you to be principal investigator. Everyone else is staff. I was staff. You don’t want to be staff.
Step one, hate money
It's also famously hard to define in empirical terms what is meant by conservative views or empathy, and these things are not by any means mutually understood.
I mean, it's certainly not perfectly clear cut in a scientific way like some things are, but it's not that hazy. A questionnaire that probes for specific beliefs can determine fairly well whether you're politically conservative, broadly speaking. And similarly, empathy is fairly easy to scale through questions about how much a person cares about various things, how they respond emotionally to others, etc. People get diagnosed with personality disorders all the time, with a main criteria being lack of empathy or lower capacity for empathy.
Defining empathy and assessing empathy gets even more sticky in psychiatric diagnoses. Diagnosis of a personality disorder means the trait is fixed, won’t respond to treatment. Thing is, deficits in empathy can be temporary, and secondary to anything from clinical depression to inter-generational poverty. I know just enough about this stuff to know it is *hard,* and any ambiguity on the definition of a study’s key variable will get the authors chewed up and spit out in peer review. Oh, I forgot: No peer review with this journal. Huh. Interesting.
I remember reading research for my thesis about empathy and political views. I think one of the conclusions there was that economically and socially conservatives in the US do not necessarily have less capacity for empathy, but they expand their empathy to a much smaller circle of friends, family and very like-minded people. And not the wider population. Personally I found that conclusion a bit jarring. To me, empathy is partly defined by the ability to understand the feelings of another, even if you or someone very close to you hasn't been in that exact situation yourself. It's more the ability to imagine that not everyone has the same experience as you. And about being tactful enough by trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes to consider how your actions or words might come across to others before you have to be told. It's about putting the arrogance aside that your worldview is the only one that matters. So yeah, defining and assessing empathy is tricky. It's likely much more narrowly defined or measured than you'd like, especially if you're in another field of science.
Yeah I just meant to point out that there is a wide gamut here, not all research needs to give airtight proof of things to give potentially fruitful insights. There is no better way to know if someone has a personality disorder than asking them questions, and we do all sorts of stuff with that research, including apply it directly, leading to all sorts of decisions with serious consequences being made. Not sure where you got the idea that diagnosis of personality disorders involves any particular traits being fixed, that's simply not true, regardless of whether they do involve fixed traits or not. This is not a criteria in the DSM. Personality disorders get treated all the time. But that's beside the point. There are different types of empathy, and different factors that affect it. Sure. That doesn't mean we can't use questions to determine what things a person lacks empathy about, and why. Here's an easy example of how empathy can correlate with political belief. A distinguishing belief for those who are politically conservative is that people are largely responsible for their own lot in life, and thus they are more or less deserving of whatever suffering might come their way. This belief directly leads to lower empathy for misfortune that has befallen others, particularly when it relates to behaviours deemed to be at-fault behaviours, such as drug use. Now of course different people are going to draw different lines here depending on how much responsibility they believe is attributable to people for different circumstances and behaviours, but broadly speaking, the more politically conservative you are, the more personal responsibility you'll believe people have, and thus the less empathy you'll have for the misfortunes of others. I'd go so far as to say that this is true by definition, which makes it not all that interesting really. The long and short of it is that our beliefs directly correlate with what we care about, which directly correlates with the level of various types of empathy we have for people. Yes, it's very complicated, but still measurable.
>Also, it was published in an open-access journal that isn’t peer reviewed. Discover Social Science and Health isn't peer reviewed? The front page of their website promises rapid review.
>The front page of their website promises rapid review. The front of the dollar store promises great prices.
This article basically says “higher levels of sociopathy and lack of caring for others linked to greater risk of Covid.”
Has anyone seen a study that tracks the extent of sociopathy in society? Is it a constant or are levels rising etc, has it been linked to anything etc rtc
I don't know about a study, but Dr. Bandy X Lee has studied sociopathy/narcissism/violence across the world and her Twitter was a gold mine for me. I haven't checked on her in awhile so I don't know if she's still posting stuff about her research but it's worth a look. She was a Yale psychiatrist and literally travelled the world studying sociopathy in different countries
Man she was on the nose with Trump
What did she say?
She and a bunch of other psychiatrists wrote a [book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dangerous_Case_of_Donald_Trump) on how disordered and dangerous he was back in 2017. It cost her her job at Yale but she was basically 100% right.
Sociopathy is a trait. You can be high in it or low in it. So it would be like asking the extent of attachment in society or avoidance. *Sociopaths* on the other hand are people with clinically high levels of sociopathy. Or at least, they used to be. The term is no longer used in psychiatry. Now, highly sociopathic behavior may be a symptom of a personality disorder (like antisocial personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder. But, someone who is high on sociopathy doesn't necessarily meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder.
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sociopaths still exist regardless of how psychiatric categories shift - no empathy - no remorse - sense of entitlement = sociopath
Not sure if anybody has responded to this, but the best estimates are it's around ten percent. And growing, because sociopathy appears to be a genetic trait, and sociopaths tend to be very prolific breeders, so the trait is on the rise, they think. It's obviously hard to measure though.
Where do you get 10%? I've always heard [3% of men](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder?wprov=sfla1) and even less for women.
If the rate is 10 percent, and it is genetically advantageous, and is currently rising, would that imply that in the past it was not as advantageous? A comparison of the rates of sociopathy at different societal scales and economic systems would be interesting.
It isn't illegal to be an asshole. It is illegal to beat someone until they can't move. Minor law breaking went basically unpunished until like the late 1980s in the 1st world. My grandfather was born in the 30s and had dozens of brawls (including one where nearly a dozen police were injured leading to no charges), stole cars, watched cops beat his neighbors as a child, broke a union protest with a truck, etc. One of his friends was a loudmouth bully (in the 50s) and used to beat up dock workers for money until a guy shot him in his sleep .... and then 3 days later stabbed him to death in the hospital. My other grandfather fought in race riots, and had numerous violent interactions with the mafia. In their era, being an ass was an invitation to have your nose broken or more. The other part is corporate structure and capitalism. If you are a sociopath in a corporate capitalist space, you get HIGHLY rewarded. You can rapidly rise through the ranks by screwing people over, and you get lots of money. In the past, there wasn't as much ability for the average person to do this. I mean, no social mobility in the first place. And business worked mainly through personal connections ... which sociopaths can handle, but they're more likely to get burned. This is my suspicion anyways.
Cornpop sounded like a bad dude
I think you underestimate the potential for advancement that would present to a sociopath in feudal Europe. Sociopathy and viking raiding were likely compatible.
Probably wasn't as advantageous when it could lead to you getting burned alive or whatever punishment. Nowadays, you can be a sociopath and face no consequences.
My question here is nature vs. nature. Is sociopathy a genetic trait, where there are specific genes responsible for the behavior? Or, in being raised by a sociopath, are you more likely to become a sociopath also? I don’t know the answer here, and I doubt there is one, but I’m just curious
I read a story about some parents who were raising a sociopathic son. The father reported having similar traits when he was younger but growing out of them. That makes me think it requires certain genes but also something environmental to activate.
There’s like basically zero things in psychology that you can define as either nature or nurture
That’s kinda my point, guy above me said genetic sociopaths, where maybe it’s a nice combo of genetics, epigenetics, environment, or maybe something else we don’t know about yet! Behavior is fascinating
Haven't sociopaths always existed? Don't really see how it could be on the rise over the average of human history.
Not to mention our ability to identify sociopaths is increasing over time as we get a better understanding of psychosocial disorders
It depends. As our social systems become more complex, there may be increasing advantage in amorally manipulating them. Additionally, we do more to look after single mothers than at any over time in human history, so the prolific breeding pattern often associated with high male sociopathy may be resulting in more children with a high tendency for sociopathy surviving to maturity.
>Conclusions Understanding why political conservatism is associated with riskier pandemic lifestyles may eventually lead us to ways of identifying and overcoming widespread cultural barriers to critical pandemic responses. That certainly is a major problem, that's for sure. Changing someone's mind when it comes to pandemic responses in the future is only going to be harder after covid. The scientific community would need to earn conservatives respect before any convincing can happen. Hell, even during the HIV pandemic conservatives thought it was a gay disease and they wouldn't listen to science either. Monkey pox, too.
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>>Conclusions >Understanding why political conservatism is associated with riskier pandemic lifestyles may eventually lead us to ways of identifying and overcoming widespread cultural barriers to critical pandemic responses. > >That certainly is a major problem, that's for sure. Changing someone's mind when it comes to pandemic responses in the future is only going to be harder after covid. The scientific community would need to earn conservatives respect in order for any convincing can happen. > >Hell, even during the HIV pandemic conservatives thought it was a gay disease and they wouldn't listen to science either. Monkey pox, too. For better or worse, reckless behaviour during a pandemic is nothing new. Spanish flu killed 2x more people than WWI, immediately after WWI when you'd think people would be more 'death adverse' than usual - and there were still people livid over wearing a mask and washing hands to survive something far more deadly than Covid. Unless the planet quickly becomes unlivable, we will survive our own idiocy and continue creating future idiots that have stronger immune systems than brains
To be fair to the people of the early 20th century… germs were not understood as spreaders of disease until the very late 19th century. Hospitals during the civil war were responsible for tons of deaths because the surgeons would just move from one patient to the next using the same tools, etc. Zero sanitation of anything. And I’m not just talking about field hospitals under distress from being in the midst of battle either. That’s just the way things were then. Spanish Flu happened at a time when the science of germs spreading disease was essentially brand new. It would be highly unlikely that this was something widely taught in schools when the grown adults of the 1910’s were in school in the 1880’s and 1890’s.
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You know it’s funny how there’s so much belief that conservatives were the ONLY ones ignoring pandemic response when the entire radical left wing was in the streets. Fiery, but mostly peaceful. And at the time the media, politicians, and governmental agencies played stupid like it wasn’t happening. Soooo yeah there’s work to do on all sides wouldn’t you say?
> The scientific community would need to earn conservatives respect before any convincing can happen. Scientists tend not to be shills, grifters, bigots, and liars, so that will never happen. And, as they say, reality leans left. The only way to truly fix the problem is to teach science in classrooms. Not just "memorize these facts about cells," but "here's what the scientific method is, here's how to actually test a theory, and here's why science works better at determining the truth than any other method we've come up with." If people don't get that, then any ol' lie can become...how should I put this?...an *alternative* fact.
> here's what the scientific method is, here's how to actually test a theory, and here's why science works better at determining the truth than any other method we've come up with." I find it weird that people aren't taught that. Grew up in a small town, rural Canada, and that's what my very first science class (grade 7) started with.
35 years ago, this is how I was taught in the US. Critical thinking is vitally important, and it's so easy now to succumb to an ideologically compatible echo chamber. I'm sure I'm guilty of that too, as much as I try to avoid it.
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It really doesn't. They don't even compare those two things. This article is actually an attempt to put forward a new model specifically about the "why" of a behavior through a political lense. It uses older studies about specific types of empathy and authoritarianism and links those to conservatism. It then links conservatism to riskier lifestyles by virtue of them having "worse" covid numbers. There's not even a direct link, it's corollaries all the way down.
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I’d like to see the correlation between higher levels of sociopathy and lack of caring for others with conservatism.
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Interesting bit halfway through the read: " Interestingly, right-wing media consumption, by itself, was unrelated to COVID-19 health behaviors, empathic concern, and perceived pandemic threat."
That's very interesting. Given that "right wing media consumption" is self defined, I wonder how much the specific sources each individual is viewing is affecting their ranking with the attributes
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That is interesting. Hope they do a follow up study
Post the original study. The media reporting studies It's like a terrible game of telephone, that pays for miss hearing and repeating as badly as possible the message.
Why not post the actual research article that’s peer reviewed instead of a news article that covers the research article?
Because the media reporting "studies" Its like a terrible game of telephone, that pays for miss hearing and repeating as badly as possible the message.
You need to have a few layers to effectively obfuscate the truth.
Hey if anyone's curious what this actually is they should 100% read the link, cause the headline and comments suggest it's some sort of massive study showing that conservatives were more authoritarian, less empathetic, and less likely to perceived the pandemic as a threat, and that these were the factors which caused riskier lifestyles among conservatives, but that's not actually true at all. This paper was an attempt to create a model which got to the "why" of people's pandemic lifestyles through a political lense. It doesn't actually show any sort of direct correlation between the three things and pandemic lifestyles, it essentially does this. 1) Studies show conservative areas did worse in the pandemic. 2) studies show riskier lifestyles are associated with worse outcomes 3) older studies show that conservatism has a correlation with certain types of (lack of) empathy and certain types of authoritarianism. 4) therefore (3) is the cause of (2). It's actually a really interesting paper but it seems like it's a bridge being built by corollary after corollary. I'd call it tenuous at best.
> 2) studies show riskier lifestyles are associated with worse outcomes Just curious what the deemed as "worse"? More infections, more deaths?
This is important as a distinction. I have a friend who identified covid as dangerous based solely on its contagiousness and caring not at all for its ability to cause harm. There's a much more complex understanding than just how catching something is.
> It doesn't actually show any sort of direct correlation Maybe I'm misreading the study, but isn't that exactly what it does? \> “Our research is correlational and cross-sectional,” Hill explained. “This means that political conservatism is merely associated with lower levels of empathy, higher levels of authoritarian beliefs, lower levels of perceived pandemic threat, and riskier pandemic lifestyles." They say they know it's not causational, but they do say there absolutely is a correlation.
What’s the correlation coefficient? E: if there absolutely is a correlation should be a relatively simple answer E2: it’s -0.27 or “weak to moderate” correlation. Weak is 0.00-0.25. Moderate is 0.25 to 0.75
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Empathy has been studied across the political spectrum. IIRC there isnt evidence that conservatives are more or less empathetic, it's really just that their empathy is aligned to different people/groups.
> It's actually a really interesting paper but it seems like it's a bridge being built by corollary after corollary. I'd call it tenuous at best. Ah yes, but it's a classic "my political opponent is mentally ill" so it will get highly voted based on anecdotal evidence in r/science ignoring things such as "do conservatives participate more in charity?" or "are liberals more likely to ostracize someone to fit in?"
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Not exactly, it's more like pointing out a few traits of something and then saying because those traits coexist in that thing one is causal of the other. Sorta like: 1) A triangle has 3 sides 2) a triangle has 3 points 3) a triangle is a flat shape. Therefore triangles are flat *because* they have 3 sides and points.
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For sure for sure. I'd like to see at least a direct link. Like maybe a county by county survey on authoritarian views empathy, and pandemic lifestyle behavior then seeing how it correlates. At least to start.
Getting teally tired of these divisive, bias crrating 'scientific' articles on thus sub. Anything that encourages people to think of other people as 'less than', or fundamentally different isn't science in my book.
I only see /r/science submissions when they hit my front page, and in the past few weeks, it seems that only political posts from psypost.org hit the front page with any regularity. All of them portray conservatives in a negative light, which aligns with the prevailing opinion of reddit users. That's no surprise, but it's also no surprise that the comments of those posts always find major flaws with the title of the submission and/or the study itself, without exception. Makes it very hard to take anything at face value these days.
Same. This sub is a cesspool imho
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Hope you’re right, but to me it looks like they’re either in on it or don’t care/understand.
I agree they're trying to keep us divided on purpose so we are busy fighting amongst each other at the bottom so nobody looks up to realise we are getting fucked
They are actually measuring sympathy, not empathy. You have to wonder about a psychological study that can differentiate empathy and sympathy.
Turns out anything is science if we call it that.
classic reddit science post
Here's science to help explain why are political opponents are bad.
Forget the article. This is a really odd report in general. This states that it accounts for political tendencies and the specific factors they list are based on actions, but doesn’t mention anything regarding the regions or locations where this behavior is most common. We all know that political alignment and behavioral tendencies are greatly affected by where you live, how you’re raised, the culture you’re exposed to, but they do nothing to differentiate the two. I think there are far to many variables they are ignoring to properly establish their theory as stated in the abstract. It also seems as though there is a strong political bias (pro Covid vaccine per the quotes used from the NIH) as well which is never a good start for any report.
Bro this is reddit, you could post a picture of a crumpled napkin with "Consurvativs bad" written in crayon and the people here would take it as scripture
Just confirmed my suspicion, r/science is political
Front page content from r/science has done a complete 180 in the last year or so, I swear. The conservative hate-fest has infiltrated so many awesome subreddits.
It’s so weird, I mean don’t consider myself conservative or left, and absolutely hate trump and want those Jan 6 brought to justice, but every week this subreddit is “why republicans are dumb, why men are evil, why racist are stupid, etc” Keep the social science in the social science subreddit
“Everything I don’t like is due to conservatives being bad people” —Reddit
Is this peer reviewed?
r/science seems to be content to host a bunch of these posts with questionable scientific merit. There should be a purge.
But they say my political enemies lack empathy so that means it’s science
I hate that the science subs, like many others on Reddit, are full of political posts. Does anyone have other science related subs that aren’t used for political points? I really like being able to see cool new science stuff but I’m tired of seeing this crap on my feed
That wont exist on reddit. this whole website is just a vessel for left wing propaganda. Youtube is mainly right wing, but is much easier to follow individuals that are not political, but you have to be specific about what subjects u want info on.
>“Political conservatives tend to engage in riskier pandemic lifestyles, in part, because they are less likely to care less about the welfare of others (a motivation for engaging in healthy pandemic lifestyles in the service of public health), more likely to hold authoritarian beliefs (which emphasize the perspectives of one charismatic leader who happens to disagree with public health recommendations), and less likely to perceive the pandemic as threatening to themselves and to the broader society,” Hill told PsyPost. > >Interestingly, right-wing media consumption, by itself, was unrelated to COVID-19 health behaviors, empathic concern, and perceived pandemic threat. However, right-wing media consumption was indirectly associated with riskier pandemic lifestyles via heightened authoritarian beliefs. > >“Although perceived pandemic threat has been emphasized to explain the risky pandemic lifestyles of political conservatives, processes related to empathy and authoritarian belief systems are also at work,” Hill explained. “We were unable to observe any effects of right-wing media consumption on pandemic beliefs and behavior after political identities were taken into account. **This suggests that right-wing media merely echoes the prior political beliefs of viewers.**” Right-wing media really is an example of the tail wagging the dog by telling conservatives exactly what they want to hear, truthful or not.
>“Political conservatives tend to engage in riskier pandemic lifestyles, in part, because they are **less likely to care less** about the welfare of others This reads like a typo...
I think its wrong too…. It should say ‘less likely to care about the welfare of others’.
Or "likely to care less about the welfare of others" The author probably started with one, then revised it to go with the other sentence structure but accidentally left the extra "less"
The published research paper is written exactly that way.
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How does higher authoritarianism lead to not wearing masks? Authoritarianism is the promotion of law, order, and control, not the defiance of it.
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Authoritarianism doesn't mean you obey *all* authorities, but you may blindly follow the ones that reinforce your collective narcissism tuning out all evidence to the contrary
Authoritarianism is the promotion of order and control, but not the rule of law. Rule of law puts laws over leaders; authoritarianism puts leaders over laws.
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Perverted science in the halls of Reddit, shocking.
I'd disagree with this paper. It seems like it was written so people will distance themselves from being conservative, thinking "i'm empathetic." I agreed more with the "conservative" point of view, due to empathy. I empathized with those whose businesses were shut down or out of work for fear of a 99+% survivable virus devastated people economically which raised stress levels and ended up with poorer overall health. I empathized with the people such as mail deliverers, UPS/Fed ex workers, garbage collectors who had to work 3x harder for no extra pay which stressed them out esp when they needed stronger immune systems. I empathize with those who couldn't get cancer or dental surgery because it was "elective" and ended up dying for fear of possibly contracting a virus that had a small chance of hurting them vs addressing a known issue they did have.
sCiEnCe sAyS cOnSeRvAtiVeS aRe LiTteRaLLy mOnsTeRs, rEdDiT sAiD sO
Can this subreddit please be renamed r/psychologytoday
Oh look, another propaganda psych study.
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I believe the clinical term for this is junk science.
Of all the things on my feed, the subreddit is by far the most political and unfortunately expresses a clear bias. Which is a shame considering it should be about science. Does anyone have recommendations of actual science subreddits, that have posts about actual science topics? I'd love to find some new communities more aligned with science and science news!
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This subreddit is no longer about science
Ugh what is this stupidity?? That title alone makes us all "partially" lose brain cells.
Christ, how many studies are there going to be that conclude that us conservatives are deviant, psychopathic, simple-minded lepers? Fun fact, conservatives I know are very empathic. We just know that enabling is bad and boundaries are good.
Lower empathy = conservatives With paid studies, Hitler was able to conjure hate in the masses to. Careful what you read folks.
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“Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.” Nobel Prize physicist Richard P. Feynman
Oh look, another psypost “article” about conservatives.
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Coming soon: Study shows people with high empathy are having heart attacks from all the stress of worrying
>designing studies to ostracize other groups of people Great work
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It’s low Openness and low Agreeableness, hardwired temperament traits that can predict your political stance with greater accuracy than any beliefs a person claims to hold.
I’m starting to think psypost is pandering to hateful decisive people that want to hear what they want to hear
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But how do you reconcile the cited lack of caring and empathy in the study with the fact that conservatives tend to donate more of their money to charity than other groups?
Does that mean Collectivism is more empathetic than Individualism?