psychology of conservatism

I don’t know if the whole thing is a joke or not (I would not put it past the people at Berkeley,) but this article [ berkeley.edu ] on the ‘psychology of conservatism’ is quite interesting. I don’t know if I can buy the whole ‘meta-analytic calculations’ which led to the conclusions… So what makes a conservative? Well, according to them:
  – Fear and aggression
  – Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
  – Uncertainty avoidance
  – Need for cognitive closure
  – Terror management
Sounds about right… :-)