This topic does not die easily:
Dr Wilson and Dr Storm restricted their study to white, Protestant
teenagers, in order to eliminate confounding variables. However, their
volunteers came from two different traditions–Pentecostal, which tends
to the conservative, and Episcopalian, which tends to the liberal.The researchers conducted the study by giving each volunteer a
beeper that went off every two hours or so. When it beeped, the
volunteer answered a questionnaire about what he was doing at that
moment, and how he felt about it.
Dr Wilson and Dr Storm found several unexpected differences between the
groups. Liberal teenagers always felt more stress than conservatives,
but were particularly stressed if they could not decide for themselves
whom they spent time with. Such choice, or the lack of it, did not
change conservative stress levels. Liberals were also loners, spending
a quarter of their time on their own. Conservatives were alone for a
sixth of the time. That may have been related to the fact that liberals
were equally bored by their own company and that of others.
Conservatives were far less bored when with other people. They also
preferred the company of relatives to non-relatives. Liberals were
indifferent. Perhaps most intriguingly, the more religious a liberal
teenager claimed to be, the more he was willing to confront his parents
with dissenting beliefs. The opposite was true for conservatives.
Here is Storm’s doctoral thesis, a source for some of the material. This Wilson blog post is a useful summary; nonetheless it emphasizes the weaker part of the results, namely the claim that conservatives are more conformist.
Surely someday we will make progress on this question; it is unlikely that any two non-random groups will have exactly the same personality traits. But what is the correct comparison? By looking only at religious Protestants, we are holding some factors constant, but perhaps choosing atypical members of each political ideology. For instance maybe all we are doing is comparing Pentecostals to Episcopalians.
As a (politically) conservative Episcopalian, yes, this is a good description of Episcopalians vs. Pentacostals with almost nothing to do with political beliefs. It’s interesting as religious sociology though.
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Conformism is a 2-dimensional thing.
There is good conformism and bad conformism. The question is, when a person is conformist/non-conformist, is it in areas of their life that help them or hurt them.
Take my favorite topic of investing. You want to be conformist in choosing fairly staid investments (stocks versus get-rich-quick schemes) but you want to be non-conformist (contrarian) when selecting assets and carving a niche. You let other people blaze the path, and then you pick the tasty berries along the way that other people overlook.
In the teen context, compare conforming to society versus conforming to your peer group. I imagine conservatism tends to conform to what has “worked” in the past. The problem arises when what has “worked” has merely kept you alive, but has taken you very far off course, imperceptably, over time. Further conformity to the status quo is not smart in this case. Conversely, trying new things is okay, as long as you realize that most of the time, they don’t work.
Not to mention the self-selection for those who would be willing to be interrupted by a beeper every two hours and to report to researchers what they were doing. If the kids weren’t loners before the study, this probably drove away all of their friends.
As a pentecostal with Episcopalian in-laws I think that group differences would account for almost all of the results. Pentecostalism is a very social form of religion, Episcopalian ism, not so much.
“Perhaps most intriguingly, the more religious a liberal teenager claimed to be, the more he was willing to confront his parents with dissenting beliefs.”
From Stuff White People Like:
“#2 Religions that their parents don’t belong to”
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/2-religions-that-their-parents-dont-belong-to/
“For instance maybe all we are doing is comparing Pentecostals to Episcopalians.”
Isn’t it even more tellingly the case that all we are doing is comparing *teenage* Pentecostals to *teenage* Episcopalians? And that this is not a possibility, but a certainty?
Doesn’t one then ask oneself what else, if anything, such a comparison might indicate? My answer would be: nothing.
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