Tag: Reason & rationality

It’s official. “Left-wingers can’t control themselves as well as conservatives.” It’s not the first headline like this appear in the Daily Mail, but this time they have proper scientific research to prove it. This is uncomfortable reading for many on the left, who generally attribute lack of success in life more to social forces than weakness of will. But if you look at the source research more carefully, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a credible progressive response to the conclusions begins to emerge.

On Thursday the nation decides. Each one of us will be free to choose how or whether to vote. But if you’ve been paying any attention at all to the findings of modern psychology, you might doubt whether your vote is truly free at all. There is a mass of compelling evidence that all our choices, including our electoral ones, are strongly affected by myriad unconscious and often irrational factors…