Tolerance of Uncertainty

Jack Glaser, an assistant professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley, has been exploring the psychological underpinnings of conservatism. He explains how cognitive campaign styles differed between Bush and Kerry (i.e. conservatives vs. liberals) and was probably the key factor in Bush's win. Fascinating reading. Excerpts:

“I’m surprised, at least in George Bush’s case, at how consistent his behavior is with all the research on conservatism,” says Glaser, an assistant professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy, whose work has primarily focused on stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. “I mean, he comes right out with it and says, ‘My job is not to nuance.’ He’s very clearly intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty.” But John Kerry, he argues, was unfairly portrayed during the campaign as a slave to subtlety, a man who saw so much complexity he didn’t know what he believed. “When people actually listened to him, and didn’t listen to the caricature of him, he did well. He won all the debates,” Glaser observes. “But I think the Bush campaign was brilliant. They identified [that characterization] right away and they knew it would stick. And they applied it and they knew he would play right into it from time to time. If the Kerry campaign had been more aggressive early on, they’d have said Bush is pathologically rigid and we have to tar him that way right off the bat. They were very late in getting to that. “At the same time,” he adds, “given the terrorism environment, if the average person is choosing between rigid and fickle, they’re going to go for rigid. And I think that’s a big part of the story.” .... “September 11 posed an existential crisis,” he explains. “Are we going to die in a horrific way, and is our society going to cease to be what it was? And under those circumstances, we [on the research team] were arguing — and I think we were right — that a conservative shift is likely. And I do think that that played a role in this election, because if you really look at most of the other issues — except for ‘likability’ — the majority of Americans were with Kerry. “Everything else is pretty much the same as 2000,” he points out, from Kerry’s and Al Gore’s policy positions to voters’ harsh assessment of their personalities. “The big difference, I think, is the war on terror and Iraq. Even Iraq is a double-edged sword. It’s a liability in some sense. But it’s a constant reminder that Bush is a war president. “I don’t want to be excessively cynical,” he adds. “Let’s just say being at war helped him.” Republicans were further aided, Glaser believes, by the fact that the cognitive styles associated with conservatism “give them a clear political advantage, simply by virtue of appearing more decisive and making clearer, less integratively complex statements. “Strategists talk about the advantage of soundbites, and keeping the message simple. And that’s just a tendency that seems to be consistent with conservative ideology.” .... Glaser emphasizes that research into what makes conservatives tick has less to do with intelligence — a trait he readily attributes to Will and some others on the right, if not to Coulter — than with different cognitive styles. And he cautions that psychological tendencies, for conservatives and liberals alike, come in shades of gray. “I think you find plenty of so-called conservatives who are highly tolerant of uncertainty, and plenty of liberals who are low in tolerance for that. But in the aggregate, if you’re looking for a trend, there seems to be a relationship,” he says. “The vast majority of people are uncomfortable when things are uncertain,” adds Glaser, who counts himself among them. “They prefer for things to be resolved and certain. It’s not so much that conservatives are unusual in their aversion to uncertainty and ambiguity as that liberals just have a higher tolerance for it. “Similarly, whereas liberals seem to have a real aversion to inequity, it’s not necessarily the case that conservatives embrace inequality or inequity. It’s just that they can live with it. It’s much more nuanced,” Glaser says.

So, liberals tend to be, on the average, smarter and thus more highly tolerant of uncertainty. This is a key point when the Democratic party decides how to make their message more appealing to conservatives/moderates