Older people more conservative? It is one thing to ask them their opinion in polls, but how do they vote is much more important since seniors vote more often than any other age group, and I remember the exit polling after the McCain/Obama election to show that seniors were more likley to vote for the Arizona senator.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
ckm8 wrote: I also get more liberal as I get older. As a kid I was a Young Republican. It turns out this isn't unusual.
Aging doesn't mean growing more conservative: study
NEW YORK | Thu Mar 6, 2008 1:25pm EST
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Contrary to common belief, aging seems to make a person more liberal and tolerant, not more conservative or rigid, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Vermont and Pennsylvania State University found that people over the age of 60 become more liberal, more quickly as they age compared to younger people.
"We still hold these age stereotypes about older people becoming more rigid in their thinking or becoming more conservative," said Nick Danigelis, a professor of sociology in Vermont who headed the research team.
"It's a false stereotype, and in fact, the evidence suggests that older people in some cases appear to be moving at a more rapid rate towards a liberal position than younger people."
It does appear that liberals and conservatives react differently to threats-
Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals, Say Scientists
* By Brandon Keim Email Author
* September 18, 2008
Deep-seated political differences aren’t simply moral and intellectual: They’re also biological.
In reflex tests of 46 political partisans, psychologists found that conservatives were more likely than liberals to be shocked by sudden threats.
Accompanying the physiological differences were deep differences on hot-button political issues: military expansion, the Iraq war, gun control, capital punishment, the Patriot act, warrantless searches, foreign aid, abortion rights, gay marriage, premarital sex and pornography.
"People are experiencing the world, experiencing threat, differently," said University of Nebraska political scientist John Hibbing. "We have very different physiological orientations."
It's all in how you wish to define conservative. if conservative is defined as rigid and narrow then it does not in accord with my own view of being conservative. I did not know that tolerance has a monopoly on "liberal" thinking or thinking at all. Such convenient pigeon holes are too limiting from my perspective.
The physiological differences is interesting. By and large, the issues viewed in fundamentally different perspectives center around moral issues, issues that have little to do with critical or scientific thinking. I'm not even going not go there. It's not worth the energy.
Rockdoc Franz wrote: There are always exceptions to the rule. If it was not for that, then the world would become boring. Nothing wrong with being different or seeing things in a different way.
hmmmmm...if one is to believe the quotes in ckm8's post, I am more part of the mainstream of seniors than the exception. Interesting.
I don't know how ""It's a false stereotype, and in fact, the evidence suggests that older people in some cases appear to be moving at a more rapid rate towards a liberal position than younger people." gets to being transformed into a majority of older people moving towards a liberal position, but I will eagerly express I am dumbfounded by how the progressive mind works.
I will eagerly express how dumbfounded I am that you equate a "progressive mind" with a scientific study. Unless you concede that reality has a liberal bias. rofllol
I admit, I fail to see how the leap from some to most is made. Logic is at the core of understanding, and logically some is not equivalent to most. Some may indeed progress to most, but the quote you chose for our perusal clearly says some, not most. In a scientific study, some would not equal most, so the conclusion to be drawn is that the conclusion you have reached from the outline of the results is progressively flawed from the conclusion initially reached.
From the quote you pulled we have two statements that are not the same appearing within 2 paragraphs of each other:
Researchers at the University of Vermont and Pennsylvania State University found that people over the age of 60 become more liberal, more quickly as they age compared to younger people.
Which represents the conclusion of the "reporter" that archer used as support for her statement.
"It's a false stereotype, and in fact, the evidence suggests that older people in some cases appear to be moving at a more rapid rate towards a liberal position than younger people."
Which was the conclusion of the researchers.
These two statements are not even close to being equivalent, which was what generated the comment about the failure to understand how the progressive mind works since both you and archer seem to understand that they are.
And we can certainly understand how the flower children as they reach their 60's starting in the new century are going to hold much more liberal views than the the people who turned 60 during the decades previous, can't we? They held more liberal views to begin with. It is not that they are becoming more liberal as they age, it is that the people of that age are more liberal than at anytime previously to start with. Are there more liberals over the age of 60 today than there were in the 1970's and 1980's? Of course there are, but that has more to do with there being more liberals in the age bracket of 20-30 years of age in the 1960's who are now reaching the age of 60 starting in the latter half of the 1990's and the early part of the new century. Who would have expected the number of liberals above the age of 60 to be in decline right now? Certainly not anyone capable of reason and logic given who the people turning 60 are and the generation that they belong to.
It took a study to find out that 60 year olds are more liberal today than 60 year olds were in the 1970's and 1980's? Really? Someone actually spent money to come to that conclusion? Deductive reasoning would have provided that answer all by itself.
PrintSmith wrote: I admit, I fail to see how the leap from some to most is made. Logic is at the core of understanding, and logically some is not equivalent to most. Some may indeed progress to most, but the quote you chose for our perusal clearly says some, not most. In a scientific study, some would not equal most, so the conclusion to be drawn is that the conclusion you have reached from the outline of the results is progressively flawed from the conclusion initially reached.
From the quote you pulled we have two statements that are not the same appearing within 2 paragraphs of each other:
Researchers at the University of Vermont and Pennsylvania State University found that people over the age of 60 become more liberal, more quickly as they age compared to younger people.
Which represents the conclusion of the "reporter" that archer used as support for her statement.
"It's a false stereotype, and in fact, the evidence suggests that older people in some cases appear to be moving at a more rapid rate towards a liberal position than younger people."
Which was the conclusion of the researchers.
These two statements are not even close to being equivalent, which was what generated the comment about the failure to understand how the progressive mind works since both you and archer seem to understand that they are.
And we can certainly understand how the flower children as they reach their 60's starting in the new century are going to hold much more liberal views than the the people who turned 60 during the decades previous, can't we? They held more liberal views to begin with. It is not that they are becoming more liberal as they age, it is that the people of that age are more liberal than at anytime previously to start with. Are there more liberals over the age of 60 today than there were in the 1970's and 1980's? Of course there are, but that has more to do with there being more liberals in the age bracket of 20-30 years of age in the 1960's who are now reaching the age of 60 starting in the latter half of the 1990's and the early part of the new century. Who would have expected the number of liberals above the age of 60 to be in decline right now? Certainly not anyone capable of reason and logic given who the people turning 60 are and the generation that they belong to.
It took a study to find out that 60 year olds are more liberal today than 60 year olds were in the 1970's and 1980's? Really? Someone actually spent money to come to that conclusion? Deductive reasoning would have provided that answer all by itself.
Not exactly what the study said....but great job at overthinking the issue.
archer wrote: hmmmm...that ought to scare the conservatives as our population ages, and seniors become a larger percentage of the population. I'm sure they will spin the results, lets sit back and enjoy the show.
:pop
I am going to man up when I get old and my body is broken.
If I need health care to sustain life and I don't have coverage or money to provide - just pull the plug. I would rather go to heaven than burden the next generation with the debt of my medical coverage.
I think that's the problem with liberals....they want to slow the progression to the after life...they don't want to find out they were wrong about God.
