Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Anxious kids and conservative votes

I've written before (though I can't find it now) about how voters tend to choose candidates based on feelings, such as how a candidate resonates with them, and not so much on an analytical look at the candidate's positions. Here's another article on that same topic from Newsweek. The article may not add much that is new, but this bit caught my attention:

"People who are anxious are drawn to leaders who give them a sense of security. In fact, an adult's political leanings can be predicted with eerie accuracy by how anxious he was in preschool: the most anxious children grow into the most politically conservative adults. Their temperament leads them to value predictability, protection and preserving what they have rather than taking a chance on change."

That prompts a question: Does the way fundies raise their kids inherently make them anxious? Is it enough to hover over kids saying, "You're going to hell unless you…" to make them anxious? Am I trying to stereotype?

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