Remember the snot-nosed kid who cried all the time in school, unsure of himself or the world around him? One study shows that it is likely he's grown up to become a conservative.
On Sunday, the Toronto Star published an article entitled "How to spot a baby conservative," by Kurt Kleiner, who reports on a discovery made by a UC-Berkley professor.
With his wife Jeanne, professor Jack Block has published a 20-year study of children and has drawn some startling conclusions about our political affiliations. From his study, which was recently published in the Journal of Research Into Personality, Block asserts that "the whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults...the confident kids turned out liberal...turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests."
Block's findings are absurd and he is clearly advancing an agenda. This is not objective research, but a way to justify Block's personal feelings.
He observed a set of 100 children from nursery school, where teachers who were familiar with the students would rate their personalities. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the kids happened to be from the Berkeley area. As progressive and educated as Berkeley is, I can imagine it may not be representative of the country as a whole. A place where the median house value in the year 2000 was $380,200 cannot hope to embody a sampling of average Americans.
Unfortunately, no part of the United States can represent the plurality of beliefs and living conditions that this vast country holds. That is one of the reasons why determining the genesis of a conservative mind versus a liberal one can prove so challenging. With so many variables, leaving it up to the initial moments in childhood omits important milestones later in life, which form our identities in ways we could not comprehend as children.
The United States is a country with a population of roughly 290 million. Taking the vast geographic size into account, such a variety of living conditions could never be embodied by any single city or area. Considering the diverse ethnic, cultural and religious groups that make up our nation, how could one location hope to capture the distinctiveness of America?
The task of finding a location suitable for a study of this magnitude would prove futile. Asking the teachers of children to rate their personalities can be reliable with 100 children, but what about expanding this study to include other areas of the country?
One of the strengths of science is that results can be duplicated by other scientists, and the contentions would hold true no matter where it was done.
I am sure we can all think of examples that contradict Professor Block's findings. Perhaps there was a child in one of your kindergarten classes who was assertive and confident who is now a College Republican, and I'm sure there are plenty of those who became progressive socialists.
Block misses the boat by looking at the behavior of children. He neglects the experiences that these children will have later in life. How they are educated to perceive the world is crucial in understanding how one forms a belief on how they perceive society should be governed.
If Block's study offers any truth, it is in the fact that statistics never give the full picture. In the words of Danish writer Robert Storm Petersen, "Statistics are like lampposts: they are good to lean on, but they don't shed much light."
