Found an article which verifies that yes, leftists can be puritanical shitheads almost identical to their conservative counterparts:
Many psychologists wrongly assumed that coercive attitudes exist only among conservatives.
From the article:
The sample was American so how it extends across cultures and political systems is open to speculation, but if you ever needed evidence for how antis, exclus, terfs, and purity-espousing assholes are similar to the conservativism they purport to deny, here you are (the article links to the original research as well)
i just found the best research article and i want to share with you all:
"The Complex Relation Between Receptivity to Pseudo-Profound Bullshit and Political Ideology"
that title in simple terms: are liberals or conservatives more susceptible to fake-deep bullshit?
the critical result is that people whose morality is based more heavily on loyalty to one's groups, deference to authorities, and moral purity are waaaay more susceptible to this kind of fake-deep bullshit.
that effect was so strong it wiped out a lot of other results in their data. for example, endorsing tradition/resisting change and being socially conservative were strongly associated with being more susceptible to bullshit, but those factors stopped predicting susceptibility once these moral foundations were accounted for.
arguably, the reason this happens is because "social conservatism" is almost shorthand for holding strong loyalty/authority/purity morals. like, a long series of research papers have found that political (especially social) conservatism is predicted by endorsing loyalty/authority/purity morals.
Not to make everything about fandom, but I've been confident for a long-ass time that fanpol antis largely base their morality on these moral foundations (loyalty/authority/purity). antis are loyal to the group consensus and get harshly rejected and excluded by other antis when they have a dissenting opinion (loyalty); they tend to be obsessed with canon validation and harass creators on social media, not to mention their deference to cult leader-like big name fans (deference to authority); and of course it's in the name: fandom purity culture.
(if you want a detailed write-up on that feel free to ask, i have thoughts)
Meaning, ultimately, i spent like 2.5 hours reading this paper and writing this post just so could write the research-supported assertion that:
Antis are particularly susceptible to bullshit
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additional description of the paper's other results under the cut, unrelated to fandom, for anyone who wants to know more of the political results but can't access the paper
a) social conservatives, people who endorse holding to tradition / who are resistant to change, and people who base their morality more heavily on loyalty to groups, deference to authority, and moral purity are definitely more susceptible to bullshit.
b) people who take the middle of the road it comes to fighting for greater societal equality (measured e.g. by asking about creating greater economic equality) are maybe slightly more susceptible to bullshit. this is apparently related to 'centrism theory' which they discuss as saying, and i quote, "less intellectually sophisticated individuals tend to avoid deviating from the mainstream" uhh ????. rather than interpret this as related to intellect, i'd sooner argue (especially with the other factors they've already taken into account like cognitive reflection), this result is mostly indicating that conforming to the middle/centre means more susceptibility to bullshit (because you don't challenge the status quo, you don't challenge the bullshit).
c) economic leftists are sometimes more susceptible to bullshit. this effect only appears when controlling for other things like social conservatism, resistance to change, and morality based in loyalty/authority/purity though.
this is possibly (they don't report enough detail for me to say for sure) because being economically right is correlated with being more socially conservative, meaning that this relationship being economically right and bullshit susceptibility only occurs when you compare people at the same level of political orientation (leftists to leftists, right-wing to right-wing).
d) swedish voting patterns are associated with susceptibility to bullshit in particular ways, related to their social and economic orientations, as you might imagine. socially left but economically right voters were among the least susceptible to bullshit. interestingly, voters for a particularly socially and economically left party were among the most susceptible to bullshit.
e) at the most basic correlations level (without getting into more complex analysis, so taking with a grain of salt), susceptibility to pseudo-profound bullshit is correlated with: being receptive to profoundness in general, worse numericity skills, engaging in less cognitive reflection, more tendency toward confirmation bias, being socially conservative, being resistant to change, basing your morality on loyalty/authority/purity, basing your morality on justice and harm (this one surprises me, but is also why we go deeper than just looking at correlations), endorsing more traditional religiosity, being spiritual, being younger, and being less educated.
Notes:
As an important caveat, this study was done in Sweden, and what looks socially and economically left vs. right in Sweden may not map on to your own country that well, especially when it comes to voting patterns. Having frequent conversations with a Danish friend who moved to Australia, her perspective on what politically 'conservative' means changed a lot after seeing what that means here vs. in Denmark.
The general results for left/right should largely hold across the board because those were personality-based results, not specific to country-specific voting patterns and thus should apply broadly (although there may be some more idiosyncratic culture-specific effects).
The results for values should hold pretty much globally, because a ton of the research on moral foundations has been done cross-culturally and specifically came from a cross-cultural lens arguing that psychology focuses way too much on western liberal morality and is missing most of the globe's different moral reasoning and values.
I haven’t fully discerned how I feel about it, despite having read some of his (and his coauthors’) research that the book is based on (Moral Foundations theory).
But what I do find striking is that I’m only a chapter in and I already suddenly feel like I understand fandom discourse / fandom purity culture so. much. better. than I did before. From the bizarre rationalizations about harm that don’t hold water to the way some fandom folks approach taboos as if they are pure (moral) evil to how someone might end up on one side of these debates vs. another.
Unfortunately I'm acquainted with someone who is a pedophile. And they've been using your post on harm/nonharm and Moral Foundations that was recently reposted to r/CuratedTumblr to justify their attraction to drawings of children and gooner 20+ yo vtubers pretending to be children for an audience of pedophiles. They claim not to be attracted to actual children and only the fictional visage of them which in their opinion makes it non harmful therefore OK to do. I would really like to be advised on how to deal with this
Moral Foundations has a "care/harm" valence which talks about how much someone's values are influenced by a desire to care for people or harm people. It's one of five (or six) Moral Foundations in the theory. It has nothing to do with justifying one's actions, only with measuring what kinds of moral arguments will be most persuasive to others because of their value systems. There's nothing in the theory about harm reduction, or any connection with justifying behavior. Your acquaintance wildly misread my writing and/or the Moral Foundations theory.
I wrote a summary of someone else's theory on tumblr, for a totally different reason; your friend misread the re-posted words on reddit and is applying the theory badly. I can't make any of that my responsibility and all I've got to go on is your description of their behavior. So I'm not going to float an opinion about your friend except to say that Moral Foundations doesn't apply here.
But I can tell you're upset and - for whatever reason - you reached out for advice so I'll try to advise you. It sounds like your acquaintance is sharing things about their sex life with you that make you uncomfortable, so for your part, maybe tell them "hey, you're not going to convince me that the things you find arousing are good and normal, so just please don't share those details with me". If they're sharing those things because you're actually in a romantic or sexual relationship then I think you two are incompatible.
Social scientists such as Ravi Iyer and Jonathan Haidt argue that there are substantial variations in human morality and that these differences influence not just a person's decision making and reasoning processes but also their political outlook.
I took the test on YourMorals.com based on Jonathan Haidt’s theory of moral foundations. According to Haidt, there are five aspects of morality: care/harm, fairness, loyalty to one’s in-group, respect for authority, and purity/disgust, which includes ideas you find repulsive. Liberal morality (shown in blue) is centered primarily on care and harm reduction, and conservative morality is more evenly distributed, but compared to liberals have a greater respect for authority and in-group loyalty, and a reduced tolerance for disgust.
There are a few criticisms that can be made. Authority here refers to traditional institutions of authority: the church, the military, etc. Had academia or science been included I assume liberals would score higher, but overall I find this to be sound.
A big part of what drove me to his work was my own alienation from my “tribe.” My results are in green, a typical liberal’s are in blue. Like most liberals, my highest scores were in fairness and harm reduction, though still decidedly lower than the average liberal who took the quiz. More importantly, I think I’m defined by what I’m not. My scores in loyalty, authority, and purity were abysmal. This rings true with my experience. I have no problem questioning my own tribe when they act like idiots. I have no love lost for traditional authority (though I do frequently defer to experts), and there really isn’t a whole lot that disgusts me. (Maybe I’m a bit of a germaphobe.) So I think this represents me pretty well.
