I'd be curious to see the study redone in (hopefully!) 5-10 years or whenever Democrats are out of power. I suspect the trait of agreeableness might be a sign of going along with whoever is in charge at the moment. Hopefully, the pendulum will swing back at some point and some kids will rebel and favor free speech.
Women/ female academics seem to have a lot to answer for during this tumultuous period - almost makes one wish they never got the vote - and I am a woman : )
Companies have long used variations of the big five personality assessment as one indicator of job and culture fit , when interviewing job candidates. Perhaps universities could do the same and at least be intentional about what kind of culture in campus they are striving for.
Reminds me tangentially of Duarte et al.’s 2015 paper on the importance of political diversity in social psychology. A field consisting of homogenous viewpoints is unlikely to be aware of its intellectual blind spots and risks devolving into unaccountable groupthink. Sadly, this seems to be descriptive of higher education in general at the moment, at least in the United States.
There is a significant confounding factor in the data from the study. Women, especially liberal women, are typically very high in trait agreeableness. The study would probably have needed a bigger sample size to see how big a factor agreeableness is vs. male/female.
Similarly trait conscientious is much higher, on average, in men. So, how these findings break down in men with fairly low consciousness would be interesting.
Also, it would be interesting to see how things break out when respondents are ranked by the “middling 10” personality traits.
For instance, consciousness has orderliness and hard work components. I wonder if one vs. the other would swing a finding.
I was never woke but I certainly perked up when in 2008 Obama began the years of bashing conservatives with, "they cling to their bibles" etc. I am not religious but that attack was my political turning point; I became a Republican and have never looked back. Obama was the most divisive leader in my 6 decades. Then Hillary continued with her "deplorables" & "super-predator" remarks; Biden with his racist, "they're going to put ya'll in chains" and "dog-faced pony soldier" (- and little black kids touching the hair on his legs 🙄). And just recently, we're told by Carville that we're, "stupid, evil & racist", and by former CIA chief Hayden that Republicans are "mostly evil" - and by Cheney that a good portion of Republicans, are "sick". Say what you will about Donald Trump - HE NEVER DISPARAGED THE ELECTORATE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OR PEOPLE OF ANY PARTY. He did call out individuals - usually elitists (low energy Jeb!) and phonies (Crooked Hillary) - who deserved to be called out and he did so very accurately. BUT TRUMP NEVER HATED AMERICANS as does the Democrat leadership.
I am female, affluent, white, educated and score very high on "agreeableness." In other words, I really ought to be "woke" (all my girlfriends from similar demographics are ardent lefties) and yet I've always been a staunch conservative with a libertarian flavour, much to my friends' (and some former friends', for this reason) chagrin. I'm curious what it is about me that kept me on a different ideological path. *shrug
Rob,
I find that people of the left's "agreeableness" suddenly seems to leave them when confronted by anything even mildly conservative.
I'd be curious to see the study redone in (hopefully!) 5-10 years or whenever Democrats are out of power. I suspect the trait of agreeableness might be a sign of going along with whoever is in charge at the moment. Hopefully, the pendulum will swing back at some point and some kids will rebel and favor free speech.
Women/ female academics seem to have a lot to answer for during this tumultuous period - almost makes one wish they never got the vote - and I am a woman : )
Me too, me too.
Companies have long used variations of the big five personality assessment as one indicator of job and culture fit , when interviewing job candidates. Perhaps universities could do the same and at least be intentional about what kind of culture in campus they are striving for.
Yeah, that's pretty depressing. I don't know how we fix the situation but I agree that we can't give up on universities. They have to be fixed.
Reminds me tangentially of Duarte et al.’s 2015 paper on the importance of political diversity in social psychology. A field consisting of homogenous viewpoints is unlikely to be aware of its intellectual blind spots and risks devolving into unaccountable groupthink. Sadly, this seems to be descriptive of higher education in general at the moment, at least in the United States.
https://jsis.washington.edu/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2019/07/political_diversity_will_improve_social_psychological_science_1.pdf
There is a significant confounding factor in the data from the study. Women, especially liberal women, are typically very high in trait agreeableness. The study would probably have needed a bigger sample size to see how big a factor agreeableness is vs. male/female.
Similarly trait conscientious is much higher, on average, in men. So, how these findings break down in men with fairly low consciousness would be interesting.
Also, it would be interesting to see how things break out when respondents are ranked by the “middling 10” personality traits.
For instance, consciousness has orderliness and hard work components. I wonder if one vs. the other would swing a finding.
"A little-understood backlash"
This kind of sums itself up, doesn't it?
I was never woke but I certainly perked up when in 2008 Obama began the years of bashing conservatives with, "they cling to their bibles" etc. I am not religious but that attack was my political turning point; I became a Republican and have never looked back. Obama was the most divisive leader in my 6 decades. Then Hillary continued with her "deplorables" & "super-predator" remarks; Biden with his racist, "they're going to put ya'll in chains" and "dog-faced pony soldier" (- and little black kids touching the hair on his legs 🙄). And just recently, we're told by Carville that we're, "stupid, evil & racist", and by former CIA chief Hayden that Republicans are "mostly evil" - and by Cheney that a good portion of Republicans, are "sick". Say what you will about Donald Trump - HE NEVER DISPARAGED THE ELECTORATE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OR PEOPLE OF ANY PARTY. He did call out individuals - usually elitists (low energy Jeb!) and phonies (Crooked Hillary) - who deserved to be called out and he did so very accurately. BUT TRUMP NEVER HATED AMERICANS as does the Democrat leadership.
I am female, affluent, white, educated and score very high on "agreeableness." In other words, I really ought to be "woke" (all my girlfriends from similar demographics are ardent lefties) and yet I've always been a staunch conservative with a libertarian flavour, much to my friends' (and some former friends', for this reason) chagrin. I'm curious what it is about me that kept me on a different ideological path. *shrug