In The Name of Science: Portraying The Other Side as Driven by Fear

To give you a taste of the rhetoric, a sampling of headlines….

The underlying trope in the above articles is that of the Fearful Conservative. According to this trope, the Fearful Conservative is afraid of change and uncertainty, clinging to the safe harbor of habit and tradition, overly controlled, troubled by bad dreams and distressed by disorder. In so many words: fear makes conservatives stupid. The authors usually bolster their case with a few studies and quotes from “experts”, which can be hard to refute if you don’t know what they’re leaving out - namely, evidence to the contrary.

In “Behind The Headlines: Are Conservatives Driven by Fear, Part I ”, I reviewed three original studies referenced by Bobby Azarian in his piece, Fear and Anxiety Drive Conservatives' Political Attitudes. For the most part, the studies were small and equivocal. The one study I could not locate apparently catalogued students’ bedroom items and found that liberal students owned more travel books and conservative students owned more calendars and cleaning supplies, prompting Azarian to conclude that “conservatives fear new experiences”. Nope, I didn’t make that up.

In “Behind The Headlines: Are Conservatives Driven by Fear, Part II”, I looked at the relationship between personality and political attitudes and found that the research on this subject is unequivocal: conservatism is not associated with anxiety or fear - it’s most strongly associated with conscientiousness. This per decades of studies covering thousands of participants (e.g., Gerber et al, 2010).

Now I’m going to put a nail on the coffin of the claim that Republicans are “plagued” by nightmares. Although the one study associated with this particular claim is rather old (2001), journalists and academics continue to repeat its singular finding as if it were established science. For instance, here is Robert Salposky, neuroscientist and science writer, from his 2017 best-seller, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst :

“Republicans report three times as many nightmares as do Democrats, particularly involving loss of personal power.” (Kindle location 7127)

So what is that one study? Here’s a description from its author, Kelly Bulkeley:

“This pilot study focuses on the relationship of dream content and political ideology in a contemporary U.S. context. The study involved 56 people, 28 (14 male and 14 female) who identified themselves as members of the political right and 28 (14 male and 14 female) who identified themselves as members of the political left.” (Bulkeley, 2002)

That’s it? One small pilot obviously in need of replication? Turns out there was an attempt at replication - by Bulkeley herself a few years later in a much bigger study (234 participants). And guess what? The original study findings were not replicated:

“Conservatives slept somewhat more soundly, with fewer remembered dreams. Liberals were more restless in their sleep and had a more active and varied dream life. In contrast to a previous study, liberals reported a somewhat greater proportion of bad dreams and nightmares.” (Bulkeley, 2006) My bold.

Not surprisingly, my Google search did not yield any headlines to the effect “Liberals Have More Nightmares Than Conservatives”. Perhaps a matter of media bias.

References:

Bulkeley, K. (2002). "Dream Content and Political Ideology." Dreaming 12(2): 61-77. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015398822122

Bulkeley, K. (2006). Sleep and dream patterns of political liberals and conservatives. Dreaming, 16(3), 223-235. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1053-0797.16.3.223

Gerber AS, Huber GA, Doherty D, Dowling CM, Ha SE. (2010) “Personality and political attitudes: relationships across issue domains and political contexts.” Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 104:111–33.

Gerber, A. S., G. A. Huber, et al. (2011). "The Big Five Personality Traits in the Political Arena." Annual Review of Political Science 14(1): 265-287. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051010-111659

Sapolsky, R.M. (2017) Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Kindle Edition. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Kindle Edition.