X-Message-Number: 29560
References: <>
From: David Stodolsky <>
Subject: Re: Sam Harris is brilliant, one of the finest thinkers of ou...
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 12:42:48 +0200

Here is the science related to my previous post. This is a quote from  
the Soc. for Personality and Social Psychology discussion List:


Below is a clickable link to an American Prospect article I found  
that raises some interesting issues of intergroup relations.  The  
overarching conceptual point appears to focus on what happens to  
members of one group when they're exposed to increasing numbers of  
people espousing viewpoints 180 degrees in opposition.  Concepts such  
as social identity, group polarization, and cognitive dissonance seem  
potentially applicable to the article.  Specifically, the impetus for  
the article is an earlier scientific paper (to which the Prospect  
article provides a link) finding that:

"even when you control for factors like party identification, the  
more secular people there were within a county, the more likely that  
people from evangelical denominations living there would vote  
Republican."

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles? 
article=religion_and_the_threat_effect

Another element caught my attention.  The article notes that the  
scientific study "[b]uild[s] on the "racial threat" hypothesis --  
which states that as the number of African-Americans in a community  
increases, the more likely white voters are to support conservative  
candidates and oppose policies that benefit African-Americans"  It's  
been a long time since I closely followed the political psychology  
literature, but I know that there's been vigorous research activity  
on the question of symbolic politics (e.g., Sears, Kinder) vs.  
realistic/threat theories.
Take a look if you're interested 
Alan
**********************************************************
Alan Reifman, Ph. D., Associate Professor
Dept of Human Dev't and Family Studies
College of Human Sciences
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409-1162
(806) 742-3000
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/hdfs/reifman.php



David Stodolsky    Skype: davidstodolsky

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29560