A Esquerda é mais liberal que a Direita? - Parte IV

No primeiro texto desta série coloquei a pergunta que dá o título à mesma, e apresentei alguns dados que sugerem uma resposta afirmativa, pelo menos no que diz respeito à realidade dos EUA (nos comentários ao primeiro texto o Miguel Madeira referiu lembrar-se de um artigo que corroboraria as mesmas ideias em relação à realidade portuguesa).

A este propósito, gostaria ainda de acrescentar este resumo de um artigo, que infelizmente só se encontra disponível para assinantes:

«In an exploration of the personal basis of resistance to authority, moral judgment and attitudes toward authority were examined in 183 men and women political resisters, including antinuclear, draft registration, and tax resisters, and anarchists, and compared to 34 liberal and 29 conservative activists. The measures used were the Defining Issues Test and a specially designed attitude survey. As predicted, the differences between resisters and nonresisters were in the realm of cognitive beliefs and values. Strong rejection of political and social authority, a belief that individual conscience is a better guide to conduct than the law, a professed unwillingness to be in positions of authority over others, and a lack of conventional religious affiliation significantly differentiated the resisters from the nonresisters. The resisters also measured high in level of moral judgment but were significantly different only from the conservatives.»

Já sem ser relacionado estritamente com este assunto (embora possa sugerir possíveis causas comuns que justifiquem as correlações apresentadas), deixo aqui também alguma informação na qual «tropecei» enquanto escrevia esta série de textos:

«Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated. The evidence is based on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States universities. At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education (e.g., gross enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels) and performance on mathematics and reading assessments from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project»

E também esta informação interessante:

«I hypothesized that people who were religious fundamentalists would be more likely to value obedience and less likely to value autonomy and that people who are more likely to attend church would be more likely to value obedience and less likely to value autonomy. My findings suggest that this is true. The more liberal a person’s religious beliefs, the less likely they are to value "obedience" and the 24 more likely they would be to value "thinking for oneself". I also found that the more a person attends church, the more likely they will be to value "obedience" and that if the respondent doesn’t attend church often they are more likely to value "thinking for oneself".

My findings affirm the possibility that conservative religious beliefs may be associated with an acceptance of what life brings, a view that is not inconsistent with Marx’s contention that religion (at least its most conservative versions) can be an "opiate of the masses"(Marx, 1959 [1843]).»