November 14, 2017

"27 strange non-political scenarios will appear. Please respond honestly and alone and we'll guess your brain's political ideology."

I enjoyed taking this test, which is premised on the notion that susceptibility to disgust is at the root of political orientation.

For the record, I'm 59% Democrat.

Here's an article in Psychology Today: "Are You Easily Disgusted? You May Be a Conservative."
Because of its role in survival as well as the particularly old region of the brain (anterior insula) that is most active when people experience disgust, it is often described as one of the original emotions and thought of as a building block for other emotions.

So what's the political connection? Evidence suggests that harm avoidance and the need for fairness underlie people's moral judgments in a number of cultures. While liberals rely primarily on these two values, conservatives also rely on desires for group loyalty, authoritative structure, and, most importantly here, purity. Following this logic, Kevin and other researchers became interested in the potential for a relation between disgust and political orientations. They speculated that conservatives are more disgust sensitive than liberals as a result of their concern with purity-related norms and that this difference would manifest itself on issues that some may associate with sexual purity (e.g., homosexual sex and, therefore, gay rights).

Sure enough, Kevin and his co-authors found that conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals.....
This makes me wonder if all the recent encouragement to be disgusted by sexual behavior is going to have the unintended consequence of making the new generation more conservative. 

And here's a TED talk by Cornell psychologist David Pizarro on the subject of disgust and political orientation:



I note that there's a difference between: 1. Really feeling disgust, deep in your nervous system, and 2. Having the intellectual opinion that it's better not to be a squeamish person (or better to hold yourself to a high standard of cleanliness). When you take the quiz, it's hard not to be more in the second realm, and that leads to a third category: 3. Knowing that you want to be liberal/conservative and that the key is susceptibility to disgust, you'll just decide you're not too disgusted or you're really disgusted based on your desire to confirm your own politics. Or even a fourth category: 4. Once you know a bunch of scientists are saying political orientation is rooted in feelings of disgust, you're going to resist disgust, because you're conservative, and you like proving these scientists wrong.

Hope you did the test before I screwed it up for you!

216 comments:

1 – 200 of 216   Newer›   Newest»
Deirdre Mundy said...

I've taken the disgust test before, and IIRC, it also is...weird about what it finds disgusting?

Like... fear of cemeteries/relics/death is taken as a more conservative position, and I think that may miss the mark quite a bit.

Also, it tends to ignore the situations that cause my liberal friends disgust. I think it's less that liberals feel less disgust and more that they are disgusted by DIFFERENT THINGS.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

If conservatives are more sensitive to disgust, then anosmia would likely cause one to become more liberal.

rehajm said...

Evidence suggests that harm avoidance and the need for fairness underlie people's moral judgments in a number of cultures. While liberals rely primarily on these two values...

Where's the evidence for this? This is just another hypothesis. Some scientists...

Liberal fairness is the kindergarten brand of fairness where showing up entitles you to an equal share, which is quite unfair.

john said...

Conservatives "rely on" purity? What the hell does that mean? To me, it means that the authors cannot articulate meaningful differences, so they drop back to convenient ones that fit their world view.

I came out 65% democrat. That has to be an artifact of my fondness for picking up dead cats.

Meade said...

For the record, I'm 65% disgusting.

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

It's conservatives who value authority, purity, and group loyalty... LOL.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Pretty sure there is something wrong with this test, I came up Democrat.

Ann Althouse said...

"... the kindergarten brand of fairness where showing up entitles you to an equal share...."

I think a test of kindergartners would show they don't think it's fair when the person who worked hard (or followed a rule of behavior) gets the same as the person who goofed off (or misbehaved).

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

john said...
That has to be an artifact of my fondness for picking up dead cats.


I knoooow. Who doesn't love to do this?

john said...

"We're all democrats now."

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Moar tests, developed by progressives to prove they are superior.
LOL.

Meanwhile, a group of disgusteds are building an anti-Trump hotel in DC. For the huddled disgusted. Butt hurt happy hour everyday from 4-6. come join us.

Tim said...

This test is brain broke. Says I'm a 61% Democrat because I don't feel particularly disgusted about walking through graveyards or having to pick up dead cats. (Dead Armadillos is a completely different thing: I have had to pick up 12 this year from the yard the dogs killed, and those things are Nasty. )
Plus working in the past as a volunteer firefighter and EMT I once actually HAD to hold a man's guts in my hands -did have gloves- as he had shot himself in the stomach with a 410 shotgun because his girlfriend left him.
I always felt more like a Libertarian anyway I guess. If there was a political designation for Contrarian I would say, Sign me up!

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

69% Democrat. If I weren't so disgusted by corruption, I probably would be a Democrat.

Freeman Hunt said...

According to this my brain is a Democrat, 62%, which is surprising to me because I found many of the test items disgusting.

Laslo Spatula said...

Disgust keeps you from eating rotten meat, drinking sour milk and avoiding potential disease-bearing items.

But some people avoid these things for ideological reasons.

I am Laslo.

Rick said...

"... the kindergarten brand of fairness where showing up entitles you to an equal share...."

I think a test of kindergartners would show they don't think it's fair when the person who worked hard (or followed a rule of behavior) gets the same as the person who goofed off (or misbehaved).

It takes years of our "education" for people to overcome their innate morality. You seem to recognize this by switching the subject from what is taught in kindergarten to what they believe and are being taught to replace.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

This test was stupid. I came out 65% Democrat. No effing way.

There is no nuance in this test. I'm not disgusted by many things and depending on the circumstance things that would be disgusting bear no disgust.

The friend's dead cat for instance: Picking up a dead animal for a friend, so they don't have to do it makes me sad. Not disgusted. Sad.Sad for the cat. Sad for my friend. Burying our own dead cat that we took to the vet to have put down last month was not a disgusting thing. It was mournful and sad.

A severed hand in a jar in a science class: not disgusting. Fascinating and purposeful. Now that same severed hand in my Grandmother's pantry......creepy. There is no disgust factor. Just weird and reportable to the police.

Cemeteries: I go out of my way to go into a cemetery, especially when traveling to an interesting or historical place. You can learn so much about the area, the people and see the human stories in the tombstones. Not disgust or anything like that. Cemeteries are fascinating.

Stupid test.

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

These people are in such a bubble they are probably too disgusted by conservatives to even ask one what he believes and take him seriously, much less allow him to review their assumptions.

Jeff Weimer said...

I came out as less disgusted than liberals. I guess it's because I was in the Navy, and you have to recalibrate your squeamish meter if you have any hope at all of coping.

Rick said...

These tests signify the designers politics, not the subjects.

Freeman Hunt said...

On this test is the extreme liberal end psychopathic? "No, I feel no disgust at seeing a man with his intestines spilled out." What?!

Sebastian said...

74% Dem. LOL. Now I'm disgusted with myself for clicking on the AA link, and disgusted with what passes for "science."

Dead cats, no prob. Live progs--wouldn't touch 'm.

etbass said...

What DBQ said.

Birches said...

63% liberal. Don't think it's accurate for me...

Rana said...

Yeah, 73% Democrat. I have a high disgust threshold because 1) I'm a mother (have you ever had one of your children throw up in your hands? That raises the disgust tolerance bar pretty high) and 2) I work in health care, but actually I'm pretty conservative.

rehajm said...

You seem to recognize this by switching the subject from what is taught in kindergarten to what they believe and are being taught to replace.

Exactly.

rehajm said...

I'm a sympathy barfer.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

*Don't let your mind be disgusted with the Clintons*

Big Mike said...

I don’t need no effing test to know that I am 100% Republican. I’m sure that disgust has a lot to do with it, having grown up near Chicago, where Democrats boast about the crookedness of their elections and the corruption of their day-to-day politics, and all the years I lived in Montgomery County, MD, where the politics are as crooked but they used to cover it up with gentility.

Tim said...

I think where the disgust meter fails in the experiment is in the context. burying a dead cat when it is still fresh is for many no big deal. Try burying a six day old dead armadillo that you found behind a bush, with the black ooze and maggots tumbling out of its exposed intestines and the disgust will make you want to throw away the shovel you used to pick it up with.
Context.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Dust Bunny Queen said...
This test was stupid. I came out 65% Democrat.


I don't know. Maybe it is revealing something about yourself that you are afraid to admit. Some hypnotherapy might help. Under hypnosis you might be able to let go of all the assumptions that you have about yourself and get in touch with your inner Democrat. No pressure. Just a suggestion.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

I'm 69% democrat. Proof the test is awesome. Thanks progressives. Do I get to live?

Mike said...

I'm sorry, this reeks of junk science.

1) It started out with their prior assumption about conservatives and purity. But I could make an equal argument that liberals like order (as attested by their loves of myriad laws and regulations).

2) They then went out and confirmed their priors. This is a red flag for bad science.

3) The test strike me, as noted above, as probing very specific things that disgust people. If you put in a different set of questions -- maybe ones that focused on religious displays -- liberals might score as more disgusted.

In short, i wouldn't trust this quiz further than I could throw the computer I took it on.

Freeman Hunt said...

Their methodology would have to change if they added in progressive disgust items.

"You are visiting a relative, and she is watching a movie with John Wayne in it."

"You go to throw away a can at a friend's house and find out that he does not recycle."

"You find out that a close friend is a registered Republican."

"A conservative ventures to explain why he is conservative to you."

"You see a rich, white man in the grocery store."

Tim said...

What do you get when you cross an armadillo with a miniature Peccary?

Laslo Spatula said...

Just break the questions down to what sex acts you find exciting and what you find disgusting.

I'm thinking that would be pretty accurate.

I am Laslo.

Birches said...

What Rana said. I was a sympathy barfer until I had kids. It's impossible to keep that going.

EAB said...

63% Democrat, and I'm quite conservative. But, I've lived in a big city most of my life so seeing a rat and smelling urine is no big deal. The smell of vomit still creates gag reflex. Sure I'd eat monkey. But a live, squirming bug? Nope. Amusing but bogus test.

Lance said...

68% Democrat, which is bogus. I may not be a Republican, but I'm definitely not a Democrat.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

On this test is the extreme liberal end psychopathic? "No, I feel no disgust at seeing a man with his intestines spilled out." What?!

Yes Freeman. No disgust versus a lot of disgust doesn't even pertain. Disgust doesn't even fit in this scenario. Intestines spilled out? Immediate horror is the more accurate word. Followed by, how can I help this person? is the appropriate response.

Not....ewwwww.....gross.

Dead guy in the hotel room last night: Depending on if he died IN the bed and they haven't gotten a new mattress, I might be really disgusted because dead people 'eliminate' all over the place. Now that is ewwww gross. Not sleeping on that. On the other hand, finding out there was a death in the room last night....great opportunity to throw a hissy fit and get upgraded to a deluxe room. Opportunity knocks :-D

Ken B said...

I am it says 69% democrat.

But I never trust the calibration on such tings. It's a common technique to skew a test so people learn they are "really" a democrat or "really" a libertarian. Why do you support republicans when you are "really" a democrat?

Freeman Hunt said...

I wouldn't eat monkey but not out of disgust. I'd be concerned about pathogens common to both our species. I don't know whether or not that is reasonable, but I wouldn't be able to look it up if someone handed me a plate of monkey meat right now.

Ann Althouse said...

"On this test is the extreme liberal end psychopathic? "No, I feel no disgust at seeing a man with his intestines spilled out." What?"

Or you could just be confused. I don't think "disgust" is the right word for that. I'd say "horror" and "extreme empathy."

Henry said...

76% liberal.

What I already knew is that death doesn't bother me and neither do food qualms.

Some of the questions are easy to answer, because I've already experienced them. Touch a dead body? Check. See a preserved organ? Check.

I really wonder how this test works for surgeons -- or short-order cooks.

Rae said...

It claims I'm a 62% Democrat. On other such tests, I'm anywhere from 70-90% Republican, and I self-identify as a constitutionalist.

The test is fatally flawed, in that it assumes that squeamish people are Republicans. Around here (rural Michigan), most of the people that dress a deer carcass or clean fish tend to be Republicans.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

68% Democrat. We seem to have decisively debunked the test which doesn't surprise me at all. In my experience, people who hunt and fish, work with livestock, and who accept the responsibility for addressing the dirty and difficult, are more likely to be conservatives. Middle-class urbanites and squeamish women are more likely to be progs. The reasoning behind the test was plainly laughable from the start.

Birches said...

Actually, Laslo is probably right...

Peter said...

@Freeman Hunt

You say you wouldn't eat it, but what if your mother told you that if you didn't eat your monkey, there would be no paper for dessert?

Fernandinande said...

The stupid parlor game predicts your sex better than your politics. Read the article.

Psychology parlor game rules:
X is weakly correlated with Y.
Measure Y.
Determine X from Y.
Discuss how X is wrong because the correlation is weak.

It's even more fun if both X and Y are ambiguous.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

I don't know. Maybe it is revealing something about yourself that you are afraid to admit.

The test already presumes that if you ARE disgusted by things you must be conservative and the opposite that if you are NOT disgusted by things you are liberal. Since I know I am not a Democrat, it proves what I already knew...I am insensitive, not disgusted by many things, practical and often cold hearted bitch when need be :-) Not afraid to admit it. It is a survival plus.

With a good sense of humor (BTW) because if someone gave me chocolate shaped like dog poop, I would laugh and try to figure out how to torment my husband with the joke poop. Pick it up off the walkway and eat it in front of him. That would really disgust him.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Henry said...
I really wonder how this test works for... short-order cooks.


I'm now hoping that all those short order cooks are Republicans. Maybe this is the problem with Chipotles.

Jim Clay said...

Tested at 69% democrat- I'm a pretty hard-core conservative.

born01930 said...

I am the son of a plumber, a submariner, and very little disgusts me. 81% democrat? That would disgust me if I thought it was a viable test.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Freeman's 8:30 nails the absurdity squarely. Fen's Law in the guise of psychology.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

This is trying to look into Jonathan Haidt's theories of Moral Foundation and see if there is supporting evidence for it. http://moralfoundations.org/ Haidt is very good, but this test makes the same mistake he originally did (though later corrected quite a bit - he's an honest man): liberals are also disgusted, but by different things. Large swaths of anti-hunting, vegan/vegetarian attitudes, and environmentalism are founded on a disgust/purity foundation, for example. As other commenters have noted, this is true of the other moral foundations that liberals supposedly don't use but conservatives do (loyalty, authority, liberty). It ain't so. When Haidt was fully liberal he designed questions that showed this, but he is much more neutral now.

The evidence for all this is pretty good now, as he refines his methods and his theories. He has added discussion of libertarians into the mix.

Tim said...

I agree horror is probably more accurate for most people. When you don't see this type of thing often if ever the shock of the experience make for a lot of the emotional reaction.
Very often it is not the sight but other senses that make the reaction.

When I worked the call with the gutshot boyfriend the thing that stuck was the smell of the intestines. It was not like you would think, the smell of feces but rather kind of an odd, meat like odor. What made it more remarkable was it was like the smell I remembered from hunting ducks when I was a teenager and had to clean the birds before they were roasted. Very distinctive. When I mentioned that to my wife who had been a surgical nurse in an ER setting she agreed. Nothing else quite like it.

Phil 314 said...

If most of the commenters on this blog take the test and are "democrat" then its a BS test.

PS Healthcare workers are less likely to be disgusted with many of these items.

Freeman Hunt said...

"You say you wouldn't eat it, but what if your mother told you that if you didn't eat your monkey, there would be no paper for dessert?"

Yeah, what was that about? Would you rather eat paper or fruit? Is this a testing to see if you're on a low carb diet? Testing for mental illness? Pica? Is there a progressive paper-eating thing I don't know about?

Jeff said...

68 percent Democrat. That might be true if emotions determined my views on public policy. But that hasn't been true since I was a teenager.

The possibility that some people are conservative because they have actually thought through their positions seems never to have occurred to these researchers. Instead, it's more of the same old "conservatives are superstitious dolts" nonsense.

I bet Kasich loves this stuff.

I'm Full of Soup said...

It told me I was a perfect Moderate?

Colin said...

63% Democrat. Millennial Trump supporter (at least in the sense of trying to drain the swamp). I'm always getting into political arguments with my Bernie / Jill Stein supporting younger brother.

I'm not terribly convinced of the theory here.

Henry said...

This disgust metric is pretty well hammered into social psychology today. Jonathan Haidt makes the claim that what separates conservatives from liberals is that conservatives have a broader spectrum of moral reactions than liberals, with disgust belonging much stronger to the right.

Robert Sapolsky surveys the field, which includes many that disagree with Haidt's ecumenical stance. One claim made against Haidt is that moral disgust doesn't serve a beneficial purpose in a modern, diverse culture. That it lends itself to xenophobic behaviors and disturbing religious orthodoxies (I'm summarizing). Consider some of the ways that very orthodox religions treat menstruation as a purity problem, for example.

These are good objections.

But then I think of the Weinstein fiasco. Maybe if there more more easily-disgusted, religious and conservative people around Weinstein, he would have been called out sooner.

Mary Beth said...

Conservative (34%)
Liberal (66%)

What is disgusting about eating an apple with a knife and fork? It might be unusual, but I don't see anything disgusting about it.

I also don't see anything disgusting about being in a hotel room where someone died. (Assuming, as DBQ pointed out, that the mattress had been changed.) The people I know who believe in ghosts or "bad energy" from something like that tend to be liberal.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

I really wonder how this test works for surgeons -- or short-order cooks.

Or people who hunt, clean fowl, field dress deer, work on farms, shovel stables, clean chicken coops, doctor their own animals, bury their dead livestock and pets...... or like my husband stand knee deep in poop in a septic tank to replace the defective lift pump. Walking through a stinking tunnel with urine and unwashed homeless would be a day in the park.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

The point ins't to show you are disgusted, it's to help you understand that you cannot possibly be conservative. You do not want to conserve liberty, freedom, - that shit is for losers.

Hunter said...

I think that more libertarian-minded people could score toward the "Democrat" end of this scale. (I am a textbook classical liberal myself and scored 59% Democrat)

The presentation of this test is worse than the substance. Anyone who has read Haidt's The Righteous Mind understands what is being measured here and why, but taking the score as a measure of Democrat/Republican or liberal/conservative badly oversimplifies the issue.

Disgust is only one of five categories in the "moral foundations theory" -- the others are care (compassion), fairness, loyalty, respect for authority, and purity. Progressives score high in the first two and much lower in the other three, while conservatives score high in all of them (and often a little higher in the latter).

If you look at the full site (yourmorals.org) there are lots of tests you can take based on the entirety of moral foundations theory and see where you rank vs. the average self-identified Republican or Democrat.

Michael K said...

Th whole thing is absurd. I came out 77% Democrat.

As far as the hand in the glass jar, many years ago when humans still collected tolls on the Golden Gate Bridge, some Cal medical students drove across and left a human hand in the hand of the toll taker.

Now that is disgusting. It was from a cadaver. I don't remember if they got into trouble.

Once I showed my wife-to-be a jar of human eyeballs in the Anatomy lab. She was disgusted but I wasn't.

Anonymous said...

I come out 75% liberal. However, I'm definitely not a Democrat; I've been a libertarian since my first year in college (and actually before that, but I didn't know the word until then).

MountainMan said...

I am just like Dust Bunny Queen. Came out 65% Democrat, which is absolutely not true. My comments would be almost exactly the same as hers.

My wife and I have been doing genealogy for over 25 years, have about 27,000 names in the family tree on Ancestry, and we enjoy going to cemeteries, they are fascinating, especially old ones in remote areas that are long forgotten. I don't understand why they would be disgusting.

I had a similar reaction to many of the other items in this "test." It seems silly to me and told me absolutely nothing about myself.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

When I worked the call with the gutshot boyfriend the thing that stuck was the smell of the intestines. It was not like you would think, the smell of feces but rather kind of an odd, meat like odor. What made it more remarkable was it was like the smell I remembered from hunting ducks when I was a teenager and had to clean the birds before they were roasted. Very distinctive.

Probably the smell of bile from the intestines. The smell of geese and ducks when field dressing (yanking out the guts and crop with your hands before going home so meat won't get contaminated)is unforgettable. Ditto...deer. Thankfully, I've never had to compare to humans. Thank you for what you do.

J. Farmer said...

I scored 67% Liberal, 33% Conservative. If anything, I'd reverse those numbers, and I doubt this test has much validity. Curious, though, how so many commenters scored within the same narrow distribution.

Laslo Spatula said...

AReasonableMan said...
"I'm now hoping that all those short order cooks are Republicans. Maybe this is the problem with Chipotles."

Well-played, ARM.

I am Laslo.

Unknown said...

This is just a group of left-leaning researchers believing they are superior and devising a biased test to give them the results they want.

Confirmation bias, nothing more.

Fritz said...

Kind of depends on how rotten the cat is.

walk don't run said...

It didn't work for me. I am most definitely a conservative but came out a 68% liberal. I spent a summer working as an orderly in a hospital while in college. Except for dealing with all the bodily waste it was one of the most interesting jobs I ever had dealing with people who were really vulnerable. On the other hand I became desensitised to much of the stuff mentioned in this test including piss, shit, vomit and dead people. When these things are part of your daily life you no longer worry about them. It also desensitises you to other things like cockroaches and rats. Only time recently that I have felt really disgusted was when I set a rat trap and it didnt finish off the rat that it caught. I had to kill it and felt really badly at the pain that I had inflicted.

Hunter said...

BTW, when I took the Disgust Scale study on yourmorals.org, I scored 2.1 overall with the same answers as I gave on the version Althouse linked (it is the same quiz) vs. 2.0 for the average conservative and 1.8 for the average liberal.

I scored the same as average conservatives on core disgust, much higher on animal reminder disgust (things involving death, corpses, and mortality), and slightly lower on contamination but still much closer to conservatives than liberals.

So, I'm completely lost as to why it thinks I'm 59% Democrat.

Henry said...

Rana said...
Yeah, 73% Democrat. I have a high disgust threshold because 1) I'm a mother (have you ever had one of your children throw up in your hands? That raises the disgust tolerance bar pretty high)

LOL. So true. I remember lying on the couch and playing airplane with my toddler one day when he vomited straight down. I had the presence of mind to tuck in my elbows to catch as much upchuck on my person as possible. No sense in having to clean the couch.

Hunter said...

It would seem the flaw in the linked version of the quiz is in how it calculates your place between Democrat and Republican. It's as if the scale really goes from 50% Democrat to 100% Democrat. Perhaps someone on the dev team forgot to carry a 1.

chickelit said...

desgustibus est disputandum

Meade said...

"It would bother me to sleep in a nice hotel room if I knew that a man had died of a heart attack in that room the night before."

Especially if the dead man was a rich white Republican. Who ate monkey meat. Monkey meat shaped like chocolate dogdoo. That smelled like it had been soaked in urine. Urine that had leaked out of his intestines. Which were cremated and I accidentally touched. As a rat walked by munching on a cockroach.

Laslo Spatula said...

"It would bother me to sleep in a nice hotel room if I knew that a man had died of a heart attack in that room the night before."

Depends on if the hooker died, too.

I am Laslo.

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

I would love to sit down with the creators of this test and discuss their assumptions, but I am betting that the prospect of a discussion with a conservative would be too disgusting for them.

nbks said...

I got a 58% "I'm a Democrat" score (I'm not). I would like to see a similar quiz based on currently popular "I am offended" scale.

Henry said...

The presentation of this test is worse than the substance. Anyone who has read Haidt's The Righteous Mind understands what is being measured here and why, but taking the score as a measure of Democrat/Republican or liberal/conservative badly oversimplifies the issue.

Agreed. The idea that you can force-fit psychological profiles onto the nonsense of party politics disqualifies any of the social scientists from serious consideration.

tolkein said...

Well there you go. I came out as 62% Republican. Me, a card carrying member of the Labour Party, stood for election as a local Labour Party Councillor. I know I'm on the right of the Party, but still. I don't think one can sensibly draw conclusions from tests like these, except to say that voodoo psychology respects no party.

Hunter said...

There are many forms of disgust that don't just involve physically gross/dead/decaying things.

For instance, the disgust some people feel at seeing two men kiss, or a group of people bowing down to a statue of Beelzebub, or an adult teacher presenting sex-ed materials to third-graders. Obviously, these would be good indicators of how conservative or liberal a person is.

Henry said...

It would seem the flaw in the linked version of the quiz is in how it calculates your place between Democrat and Republican. It's as if the scale really goes from 50% Democrat to 100% Democrat. Perhaps someone on the dev team forgot to carry a 1.

Looks like they applied a ceiling instead of a round.

Bilwick said...

I'm a libertarian, so I don't know where I'd fit in. "Group loyalty doesn't excite me as much as loyalty to values; and then only if the values are rational. (And I mean truly rational: not ARM/Toothless State-female fake rational.) "Authoritative structure" seems something that statists would get excited about. Maybe I'd come down more on the liberal side--Classical Liberal side, that is.

On the other hand I do feel a lot of disgust. . . mainly toward sadomasochistic pseudo-liberals who check their reason at the door-- the door of the Church of the State--and not only embrace their serfdom, but want to force serfdom on me. People who don't value liberty (their own and others') REALLY disgust me.


Anonymous said...

It says I am 74% democrat, yet I am to the right of Louie XIV.

So, what's my line ?

buwaya said...

I come from the third world, and so the disgust threshold is meaningless.

WaBlogger said...

According to the test I got the same result as Althouse, 59% liberal. At best I should be 59% conservative, but by my own estimation I am more like 80% conservative. I reject the premise.

Laslo Spatula said...

Your child had a bowel movement in the toilet and forgot to flush.

A friend had a bowel movement in the toilet and forgot to flush.

Your spouse had a bowel movement in the toilet and forgot to flush.

A homeless man had a bowel movement in the toilet and forgot to flush.

A homeless man had a bowel movement on your kitchen floor. While you were preparing dinner.

The homeless man is now masturbating in your living room.

The homeless man is now masturbating in your living room. And his penis is riddled with sores.

Your child who forgot to flush the toilet says the homeless man is his Secret Friend.

I am Laslo.

Hunter said...

Deirdre Mundy said...
Also, it tends to ignore the situations that cause my liberal friends disgust. I think it's less that liberals feel less disgust and more that they are disgusted by DIFFERENT THINGS.

A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest /
And a queer threw up at the sight of that

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

If you choose maximum disgusted every time you come out strongly conservative, the problem is with the assumptions, not the math.

Anonymous said...

Mellow yellow custard dripping from a dead dog's eye...

David said...

I am 63% Democrat, which is way off base.

Bryant said...

You see President Trump holding a press conference on CNN

No Disgust, Slight Disgust, ...

David said...

"If you choose maximum disgusted every time you come out strongly conservative, the problem is with the assumptions, not the math."

Correct.

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

Remember how disgusted liberals were when they were slaughtering Turkey's in the background of that Sarah Palin interview at an Alaskan business?

Just asking questions (Jaq) said...

Remember how disgusted liberals were when they were slaughtering Turkey's in the background of that Sarah Palin interview at an Alaskan business?

Tim said...

I think they are asking the wrong disgust questions.

Here's a sample question:

You see a rich and powerful man grooming a 12 year old boy to become his personal sex object: are you
a. excited to meet them
b. wary your son is next
c. disgusted in the extreme
d. reaching for your weapon.

Seeing as this got a US serviceman court-martialed in Afghanistan, I think there is some real-world applicability here.

Rosalyn C. said...

I'm 53% liberal/ 47% conservative, which I think is about as close to being a centrist as you can get. This is accurate. You'd think I would get along with both sides but the reality is I piss off both sides.

buwaya said...

I am 96% Liberal.
But, as I mentioned, a third-worlder.
A lot of these scenarios, been there, done that, some daily since birth.
Heck, cockroaches? Really?

According to this logic, just the cuisine would make one a liberal, where I come from. Balut, bagoong, dinuguan.

Hey, thats a new approach for Democrats - sell Filipino food as the next big thing. Modify the disgust response.

Fernandinande said...

predicts your sex better than your politics.

And your sex predicts your politics better than a disgust measure (.45 vs .3 or .38):
Disgust Sensitivity, Political Conservatism, and Voting
(Pizarro and others)

buwaya said...
I come from the third world, and so the disgust threshold is meaningless.


They ran the study in SE Asia, Middle East, etc. and got a somewhat lower correlation (~.22 vs .3). UK was the lowest, though, .17.

Darryl Thomas said...

Curious test. The premise seems to equate revulsion to gross things with being republican. But then Anthony Bourdain will eat ANYTHING — including gamey rectum -- and he’s a devout progressive. Perhaps he designed the test.

buwaya said...

Much of the "disgust" stuff in there is just physical filth.

Perhaps it is just detecting that conservatives are better housekeepers?

Darryl Thomas said...

Curious test. The premise seems to equate revulsion to gross things with being republican. But then Anthony Bourdain will eat ANYTHING — including gamey rectum -- and he’s a devout progressive. Perhaps he designed the test.

chickelit said...

The "scientists" should base their study on a more molecular level. Here's is a litany of some of the smelliest chemicals. If your behavior conjures any of those molecules, it is probably disgusting and should be avoided.

n.n said...

Progressive diversity that denies individual dignity.

Abortion rites denying lives deemed unworthy, inconvenient, or profitable.

"Clean wars", including refugee crises, that recreate the trail of tears.

Immigration reform in lieu of emigration reform.

Scientific prophecies to justify redistributive change, and compensate for asset inflation among other things.

Political congruence ("=") to selectively, opportunistically exclude orientations, associations, etc.

Yeah, there is cause to be disgusted, not the least of which includes the certified psychos and Too Many Labels that dance around the transgender spectrum., including homosexuals, bisexuals, transvestites, and neo-genders.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Feranindianide said...
UK was the lowest, though, .17.


They didn't understand the underwear question. It would have dropped to zero if they had asked about bathing once a week.

Patrick said...

LOL at this test. I scored exactly as Ann did, and I am a right-wing nutjob.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

@ buwaya Re: ethnic foods

Trepas de Leche which actually are pretty good if prepared correctly, not like this guy. Actually, they are better with grilled baby goat entranas (intestines) that still have the milk in the process of being digested. Like ricotta cheese. Yum.

Tacos de Lingua Beef tongue tacos. My very favorite!!! Tells you that you are in an authentic Mexican eatery and not a Del Taco, everything from a can kind of place.

Eat THIS Democrats.

chickelit said...

Europeans gleefully gulp tripe. I was once fooled by them, being served some at a Swiss university cafeteria. They told me it was calamari. I thought the ringlets were a little too small and a little too chewy.

buwaya said...

I'm a rightier nutjob. I want to restore the Spanish Empire under the Bourbon monarchy, re-start some crusades, and re-institute the Inquisition.

96% Liberal, huh.

FWBuff said...

69% Liberal/ 31% Conservative, according to the test, which is absolutely wrong for me. I grew up on a farm with livestock, and I raised three children. My disgust threshold is pretty high.

Tommy Duncan said...

What Dust Bunny Queen said.

I scored as a Democrat, which is 180 degrees off. Like DBQ, I suspect people who grew up in farm country react differently than suburbanites to things like flys, rats, intestines and graveyards at night.

buwaya said...

Re tripe and tongue, and all those other bits, Anthony Bourdain is right on this, if not much else.

All are standards in Spanish cuisine.

CWJ said...

Althouse 59% Democrat sounds about right.

And yet all but two of the commentariat that shared their scores were more "Democrat" than her. Both of those were no more than 6 points less. Weird!

Bill said...

I enjoyed taking the test, even though I scored 70% liberal, which is a mound of maggot-infested bullshit. I think of disgust as something to overcome, in many cases - as a way of coming to terms with the world. You can't go through life wincing at every bug or turd that litters your path.

Example: I overcame my arachnophobia by learning as much as I could about spiders (There continue to be things that disgust me, but I'll restrain myself from mentioning them here).

It would be interesting to know the political biases of the test's creators.

Red Feather said...

Well, I'm as conservative as they come and I scored 71% liberal. I answered the whole thing honestly. I'm a boy mom, so my yuck meter goes pretty high. I suspect life experiences have a lot more to do with how you answer than political identification.

buwaya said...

When we were kids we used to play with spiders.
Kept them in matchboxes, and made them fight each other along a piece of stretched string. This is a traditional Filipino kids game.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

@ Buwaya

Dinuguan sounds actually very interesting. I'm a big fan of Blood Puddings which are impossible to get outside of some very Irish ethnic areas. (blood and pork sausage)

Here is a recipe from years ago when I actually attempted to make this stuff. (you knew I was going to do it didn't you?)

Blood Puddings Irish Style


4 pints blood (don't ask)
8 oz oatmeal
8 oz breadcrumbs
2 tbs finely chopped onions
4 oz minced fresh pork
Pinch of herbs (savory is what I used about 1/4 tsp dried.)
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt (maybe not so much depending on who....um...I mean where you got the blood*)

Wash the intestines thoroughly, leaving each piece about 15 inches long. Steep in salted water over night (You can buy some already prepared from your butcher if you have a butcher who can get these for you or order on line). Try to use some that are rather larger than you would use for italian sausages. About 3 inches in diameter). Stir the blood until cold to prevent lumps. Next day mix the ingredients together with blood until it is stiff. Wash intestines again and tie one end. Put the mixture into the intestine and then tie the other end. Put into a pot and cook slowly for 2 ½ hours in the water. Cut each pudding into about 8 pieces, flour the cut ends, and fry in butter.

(Recipe word for word from 250 Irish Recipies (Mount Salus Press, Dublin) A cookbook I bought when I was visiting in Ireland in 1969- 1970. I know…I’m a food geek. Cookbook souvenirs.)

I used instant oatmeal for a finer texture and made my own bread crumbs from regular firm stale white bread, not the canned Contidina crap.. Also added a bit more pork fat because I like that texture. The mixture is kind of like a very soft cookie dough. They said next day after stirring the blood, but I just let it sit in an cooled ice chest. .. no ice.(not the fridge....too cold) until it was completely at room temperature. Be sure to not boil the puddings and be sure that they are cooked all the way through. They should be just barely at a simmer. You don’t want them to break and ooze into the water… believe me.

I haven't made this in years and years because my husband won't have it anywhere near the house. This and chicken livers.

*Source of the blood....We have a friend who raises and slaughters hogs for market.

Does this make me a Democrat?

madAsHell said...

"Share this on Facebook" tells me everything I need to know.

stevew said...

No questions about spiders - that's about the only thing that really disgusts (and repels) me. All the rest is pretty tame causing reactions from meh to mild eww. Says I have a Democrat brain. Perhaps based on their disgust scale but my politics and policy positions are purely libertarian.

-sw

buwaya said...

Like all these things, if done right they are much better than they sound. Brilliant even. If done wrong ...

The big advantage of muscle meat is that its difficult to go disastrously wrong.

Big Mike said...

Well, I broke down and took the test, and discovered that I'm 51% Democrat. As I wrote at 8:27, that's 51% away from my self-assessment. So tell me, folks who took the test, did anyone score less than 50% Democrat? Or am I the most Republican of the test takers at 49%?

RMc said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
RMc said...

BTW, the last page of the test sez, "Want to annoy all your conservative friends and family?" Gee, biased much?

Heather in Canada said...

Interesting. I have never posted a comment here before. I scored 24% conservative, so was told I'm Democrat. Actually, I am Canadian, and I am a registered nurse who is pretty strongly conservative in my views. My "disgust factor" is represented more by my profession than my politics. (As in, I am more disgusted by cockroaches in houses than by people dying of cardiac arrest in hotel beds, or in vomit, etc.) So, I say that's a pretty biased questionnaire.

jwl said...

Jonathan Haidt - Politics of Disgust:

How does disgust influence modern political behavior? I’ve been studying disgust as a moral emotion since I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, working with Paul Rozin. It’s a fascinating emotion, lurking behind most of the divisive social issues in the American culture war, from abortion through flag burning, gay marriage, and now trans-gender bathroom access.

My colleagues and I have found that social conservatives are higher on “disgust sensitivity” than are progressives and libertarians, and we’ve found that people’s scores on the “sanctity” foundation of the Moral Foundations Scale is a powerful predictor of their attitudes on many political issues, even after you partial out their self-placement on the left-right dimension.

The role of disgust in politics is especially important in 2016 as Donald Trump talks more about disgust than any major political figure since, well, some 20th century figures that were concerned about guarding the purity of their nation and ethnic stock.

http://righteousmind.com/the-politics-of-disgust-animated/

Quaestor said...

41% non-Democrat is reason for hope.

mandrewa said...

Since I've actually run into a number of the scenarios mentioned I'm fairly confident in my score. I scored 67% Democrat. Which is a somewhat deceitful way to present the results since the test is supposed to be about left versus right. But it's kind of baloney. I know what this is about. Supposedly Hitler was obsessive-compulsive and wanted his surroundings super clean. So the whole point here is to say that Hitler was conservative.

This is totally ignores the fact that Hitler was far left, and so were virtually all of his close associates. In fact I don't think there was single conservative among them. Now I'm not speaking of Hitler when he was the leader of Germany. I think you get a clearer assessment of someone's ideology when they are not in power. Someone that is actually in office is constrained by reality and therefore what they do is a composite of what they can do, what they are constrained to do, and what they want to do.

Now for all I know there may be some deeper connection between disgust and a tendency towards being conservative. But I highly doubt that is the only difference between the left and the right that can be discovered. And the reason why this is being emphasized is I suspect as I state above.

This is not the only time I've taken a test and come out by some non-political criteria as left-wing. But I've never been left-wing. I've always been strongly opposed in fact. I like to think that's because I like to think for myself, but it may be because I've read so much, including history, and I'm judging things more by the consequences instead of thinking that intentions determine what happen. Part of it is probably that I'm skeptical of people. Most people are a real mix of good and evil. The good is great and in fact it's most of what most people are about. But the evil is there.

So much of what happens today has a lot of precedent. Parts of it are new. Most of it isn't. Most of the books I read a long time ago that influenced my thinking were written by left-wing authors, and I disagreed with part of what they were saying but it is also true that they were not much like today's generation, which is full of hate and delusion.

Fernandinande said...

Rob McLean said...
BTW, the last page of the test sez, "Want to annoy all your conservative friends and family?" Gee, biased much?


It fills that in with whatever your result was.

I answered each question with the middle answer and it came up with the silly conclusion "Your brain is a Perfect Moderate" (perfect! 50% 50%! ... sounds bogus) and it asked

"Want to annoy all your non-moderate friends and family?"

Martin said...

I took the test and it told me I am 70% Democrat, which is really hilariously wrong.

What disgusts me more than almost anything else is how the Democrats use identity politics to tear the country apart. Real disgust, as in lip-curling hatred. THAT disgusts me and as long as the national Democratic party keeps doing that I can never vote for one of them. And the fact that I am only mildly bothered that the chef has a cold has NOTHING to do with it.

I have read where Hitler's genocidal hatred of Jews seemed to have been motivated not so much by "rational" thinking (from incorrect assumptions), as a feeling of disgust. And that disgust and contempt are perhaps the strongest political motivators. I can accept that, but disgust about issues in the public sphere is far different than being squeamish about stepping on an earthworm.

I suppose they have some (probably bad) research to back up their contention, but I strongly suspect in a few years there will be a big, "Never mind, we over-interpreted some very limited data."

Quaestor said...

The fact that one of the test designers has appeared on TED Talks should be a HUGE hint on the scientific rigor, or lack thereof, of this clickbait tripe.

Birkel said...

I am 71% Democrat. So I guess my rational reasons for believing a system of Leftist Colllectivisim will inevitably lead to starvation, depredation and a loss of individual freedom is not based on psychology but rather long experience watching those outcomes happen.

That survey was designed to make Leftist Collectivist professors feel better about themselves and their desire to control the freedoms other people should, by Natural Law, never surrender to know-it-all professors.

Fernandinande said...

Red Feather said...
I'm a boy mom, so my yuck meter goes pretty high.


The parlor game predicts your sex better than it predicts your politics, and your sex predicts your politics better than the test does.

Todd said...

I see myself as a socially flexible, fiscally conservative libertarian. I generally don't care what individuals do as long as they don't negatively impact others, don't like the Government telling me what I can or can't do, and think I can spend my money better than the Government can.

That said, the test rated me as: 22% conservative & 78% liberal, which would surprise ALL of my friends.

paulmichiel said...

“Sure enough,” the study produced exactly the result the investigators were expecting.

Jim S. said...

Huh, I'm 62% Democrat.

David in Cal said...

The study failed for me. I scored 75% Democrat, but I'm a loyal Republican. (However, I am liberal on social issues.)

Quaestor said...

The test is fatally flawed, in that it assumes that squeamish people are Republicans. Around here (rural Michigan), most of the people that dress a deer carcass or clean fish tend to be Republicans.

Take a lefty fishing. Odds are he won't be able to bait his own hook. Odds are he'll have so much empathy for the fish he'll throw back whatever piscatorial varmint is unlucky enough to be caught, but he'll gladly eat half of your catch or sit at the table chewing arugula while accusing you of fish murder.

Fabi said...

74% democrat. Fuck you, Trump!

I'm Full of Soup said...

Am I the only one who did not get a % score? It old me I was a "perfect moderate" which is way wrong.

Richard Dillman said...

Let's see, people I know who hunt and fish, clean and dress deer, trout, salmon, and walleye, are usually for small government, and against government overreach. They usually vote republican. The designers of this test are living in a liberal bubble as defined by Charles Murray.
The next time I gut a fish and gaze on the beautiful colors therein, I will imagine the glories of socialism. How disgusting is modern life in Venezuela or how disgusting was life in the Ukraine from 1930 to 1934 during Stalin' s forced starvation of the peasants and kulaks?

And I scored 77 % democrat.

Quaestor said...

I have a better test in mind, a questionnaire with three responses to each query — 1. Yes., 2. No., and 3. I don't know enough about the subject to form an opinion. The lower the portion of Response No. 3 in relation to the other two predicts Democratic Party alignment.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

How many leftist vegan hipsters could stomach watching someone field dress a deer?

traditionalguy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clyde said...

I got 70% Republican. The world is a disgusting place.

DavidD said...

This test smells like the outcome was predetermined.

Disgusting.

traditionalguy said...

69% Liberal. WTF. Spending an education among Medical School centered campus followed with a career as a lawyer dealing with human travail and horrible injuries makes everyday fears of impurity leave you forever.

CarolynnS said...

Oh piffle. The test rated me as significantly democratic; I am, in reality, significantly conservative. I am a teacher and a mom; if I were disgusted by vomit, for example, I wouldn't have survived. I have traveled extensively; if I were disgusted by cockroaches and rats, would I be a traveler to third world countries? This "disgust meter" does not take into account life experience. The creators of the test presuppose characteristics of conservatives and then create questions to support those presuppositions. Phooey.

traditionalguy said...

The disgust factor for me comes not with everyday earthy corruption, which all life is heir to, but comes as a reaction to the assumption of superiority by the arrogant but incompetent holding power.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

This is what got Louis CK in trouble. He hung out with comedians and other creative types, mostly liberals, or at least people who thought of themselves as open-minded, worldly, tolerant, edgy, even, and unburdened by old, strait-laced moralities typical of conservatives. He asked women for consent to wank in front of them, and they, not being prudes, either gave consent or voiced no objection. Later, when they realized he wasn't joking, or that he enjoyed his disgusting display too much for their taste,they were appalled, and woke enough to recognize that he was a patriarchal oppressor, and that women are forever victims.

Enlighten-NewJersey said...

I'm pretty conservative and received a score of 56% Dem - 44% conservative. I took the test before reading much of this blog post, so I don't think my test taking was tainted.

Static Ping said...

I did not read your comments before taking the test.

Apparently I am 58% liberal. That's about as bad a read as possible without having a completely broken model.

JML said...

CarolynnS said...

Oh piffle.

I agree. I'm tempted to say the bias in the quiz disgusted me. But it didn't. I wasn't even surprised.

hombre said...

According to the test my brain is 63% Democrat. Now that disgusts me!

sparrow said...

It pegged me at 70% liberal which is simply wrong. I think it's a one dimensional test.

Pettifogger said...

The test result labeled me a strong liberal. I'm a former president of my local Tea Party. Go figure.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

76% Liberal. I haven't voted for a Democrat in years.

Mr. D said...

62% Democrat according to the quiz. I think the quiz doth protest too much.

Original Mike said...

69% democrat. Absurd.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Well, one thing this test has shown is that there is not a lot of ideological diversity at the Althouse blog, but we kinda knew that already.

buwaya said...

"there is not a lot of ideological diversity at the Althouse blog"

Hey! I was born diverse!

Molly said...

I took this, and see my scores (1.5 total, 0.8 contamination, etc.). But I don't see any place where I am told my % democrat (or republican). What am I missing?

Hunter said...

@ARM

By a quick survey, there is a well populated 30-40 point range. It is just odd that almost everyone was judged to be a Democrat.

I think it's a problem with how this version of the quiz is coded, since it doesn't look anything like that if you take the exact same quiz at yourmorals.org.

Luke Lea said...

I'm 77% Democrat, which is probably about right. Consider myself economically liberal but socially and culturally conservative -- as you would gather just from just looking at the "look inside" feature on Amazon for my new book: https://goo.gl/q4kodC

RichardJohnson said...

69% Democrat, but I would vote for a Democrat Presidential candidate only over my dead body. Disclosure: I am a former Democrat who began voting Independent. I was DISGUSTED by various Democrat stances on foreign policy in the '80s and '90s, causing me to cast my first vote for a Republican Presidential candidate, and later to decide that I would in the future vote only for an Independent or Republican for President. I voted Third Party in 2000, but was DISGUSTED by Democrat lack of principles in the Florida recount. After 2000, I always voted for the Republican Presidential candidate.

John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton disgust me more than cockroaches upset me.

CStanley said...

Yeah, Haidt's actual research and analysis of moral disgust is better than this parlor game version. For one thing there was very little of sexual disgust questions, which I think might more accurately hew to the liberal/conservative mindsets.

And since so much of this quiz focuses on disgust of body gore, it's results are inaccurate particularly for people in medical professions.

RichardJohnson said...

Assistant Village Idiot @ 8:42 a.m.
liberals are also disgusted, but by different things. Large swaths of anti-hunting, vegan/vegetarian attitudes, and environmentalism are founded on a disgust/purity foundation.

In addition, consider the disgust liberals have for "deplorables." Consider the speed with which liberals throw "racist..bigot..homophobe..Islamophobe..deplorables" at those who disagree with them. Methinks the argument could be made that liberals are more disgusted by people who disagree with them than conservatives are.

The number of speakers that progs shout down on campuses can also be looked at from the disgust model. They are so disgusted at all those evil speakers, such as the racist Charles Murray whose first wife was Thai, that they conclude they shouldn't be permitted to speak.

TML said...

I'M A PERFECT MODERATE! 50-50. Cool. I guess.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

I would think age is more important than politics when it comes to disgust factors. By the time you're my age you have likely dealt with death, diapers, and all manner of uncomfortable situations. From my experience, younger folks are much more likely to feel squeamish under adverse conditions. And I include the younger version of myself in that generalization.

Drago said...

AReasonableMan: "Well, one thing this test has shown is that there is not a lot of ideological diversity at the Althouse blog, but we kinda knew that already."

The party of safe spaces and rioting to shut down speakers would like to take a moment to lecture you on diversity of thought.

Perfectly Soviet.

Howard said...

69% demoncrat.

Known Unknown said...

Democrat ≠ Liberal. Republican ≠ Conservative

And what of us who don't identify as one of the political binaries?

mandrewa said...

ARM said, Well, one thing this test has shown is that there is not a lot of ideological diversity at the Althouse blog, but we kinda knew that already.

Yes, but isn't that true everywhere?

I'm tempted to say that anyone on the left that talks politics to people on the right has right-wing tendencies that they may be unaware of.

It seems to me that on the internet, it's a bit different face to face, but on the internet anyway when both far left and just plain left people interact with those to the right of them, almost everything that they say is an insult or an expression of hate. There just doesn't seem to be much there beyond that.

I've seen this so many times. I can't remember it being different.

themightypuck said...

I took it twice. First time I was 61% Democrat but I thought I was being overly wishful and hence slightly dishonest in my responses. I tried to be totally true the second time and got 50/50.

Known Unknown said...

"Well, one thing this test has shown is that there is not a lot of ideological diversity at the Althouse blog, but we kinda knew that already."

So glad you're here, buddy.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

So you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you.. you flip it on its back. Why did you do that?

Howard said...

Blogger Quaestor said... The test is fatally flawed, in that it assumes that squeamish people are Republicans. Around here (rural Michigan), most of the people that dress a deer carcass or clean fish tend to be Republicans. Take a lefty fishing. Odds are he won't be able to bait his own hook. Odds are he'll have so much empathy for the fish he'll throw back whatever piscatorial varmint is unlucky enough to be caught, but he'll gladly eat half of your catch or sit at the table chewing arugula while accusing you of fish murder.
Not a problem game-boy. You should come out here to the central Cali coast in the heart of the Red Triangle and go kayak fishing with me and my so-called liberal lefty friends off of Bean Hollow. Baiting a hook is easy, try taking a 36-inch Ling Cod off your hook with your bare hands. Not manly enough, maybe you would prefer spear fishing for the prehistoric Cabezon at Pigeon Point. Later, you can go big wave surfing at Mavericks with more lefties. Can't surf? There's always the sharkfest swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco, sans wetsuit, natch. After that, continue on up the coast for some Ab diving along the Lost Coast. If you could handle any one one of those lefty outings, it would prove you are not the cuck you play on Althouse.

Krumhorn said...

Ok. I’m assuming that libruls and Dems don’t mind touching any part of a public toilet seat with their skin, because I sure won’t do it without many layers of paper in between.

And while we’re on the subject, who is the leftie masochist who designed those toilet seat papers that must be disconnected at three points when the turtle is fully sticking his head out?? Of course, two of those papers are always required.

- Krumhorn

Rick said...

mandrewa said...
[ARM said, Well, one thing this test has shown is that there is not a lot of ideological diversity at the Althouse blog, but we kinda knew that already.]

Yes, but isn't that true everywhere?


It shows there's not a lot of disgust diversity. See how easy it is to fall for junk science?

Bilwick said...

Howard, your "so-called liberal lefty friends"? Are they lefty "liberals" (and by that I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State fellators") or not? If they're not (as the "so-called" implies) then Quaestor's remarks wouldn't apply to them, would they?

Bilwick said...

Let's accommodate AReasonable[sic] man, and make this a more diverse blog by bringing on more State-f*ckers like him. Maybe Prof. Althouse could recruit at a local S/M leather bar. You tap into the sadomasochist crowd and you're sure to tap into a great source of "liberals." ("I'm unworthy of my money! Tax me, tax me good and hard!" "You scum--you don't deserve to be more prosperous than others! Bend over!"

Balfegor said...

I end up as 57% Republican (which I take as a proxy for conservative). I think this somewhat understates my conservatism though, because some of these questions aren't really universal. For example, the thought of eating monkey meat doesn't particularly horrify me, because, well, they're mammals like cows and horses and rabbits, and I'm not generally opposed to eating moderately intelligent creatures (e.g. octopuses). On the other hand, the thought of eating crickets does make me shudder.

Similarly, I'm a lot less queasy than average about drinking from the same glass as other people because I eat communal foods all the time, and it's never given me the willies when other people don't flip their chopsticks around (I do so when other people signal that they care about it, but if no one else cares, I don't).

Eating fruit with a knife and fork though . . . is that a thing that really bothers people?

David Smith said...

An awful lot of the things described might mildly amuse me, or cause concern (the accident victim with the exposed intestines, the sick chef) but not disgust. I'm old and been around the block a lot of times, and not much actually disgusts me (given my understanding of "disgust"), but I've identified as conservative (small "C") since my hippie days fifty years ago. So my take on "You have a Democrat brain" is "Sorry, Charlie".

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Lord have mercy! 54% Republican. The test is bogus.

buwaya said...

According to the test I am Joseph Stalin, or Pol Pot.

themightypuck said...

Huge environmental factors involved. If you have been a doctor or cop for 30 years, very few of the things on the test are going to bother you.

BillyTalley said...

66% Dem here.

JaimeRoberto said...

I'm 52% Democrat, but I'm disgusted with how our government spends taxpayer money and how it tries to stick its nose in everyone's business. Funny how that question wasn't asked. Given that nearly everyone here scored in the Dem zone, either the test is flawed, or there's a lot of self-selection in this comments section.

mandrewa said...

ARM said, Well, one thing this test has shown is that there is not a lot of ideological diversity at the Althouse blog, but we kinda knew that already.

I've already commented on this, but an idea has occurred to me.

I'll voice it as a challenge. ARM if you know of a website, where the ratio of left-wing to right-wing commenters is 9-to-1 or something similar, in other words the opposite of what's going on here, then I'll promise to participate in that website for at least a month. But I'm making an additional qualification. It can't be a reddit style comment system, because the way that works is if you say unpopular things then you get voted down and your comments become invisible to most people. There's no point in my participating in that kind of thing.

Now I suspect it'll be a challenge to find such a site. I'm hoping for a place where there's actual interaction. It seems to me that it's really hard to find this.

As a generalization when people on the left are in the majority they don't interact in constructive ways with people on the right. There are two common patterns I see: A) they just ignore and don't respond to any other view; or B) it's waves of non-substantive hatred. By non-substantive, I mean there is little argument on the issues, just ridicule and insult.

Now I know you get a fair amount of ridicule and insult here, but at the same time many people are offering reasons for what they think when they respond to you.

I don't see reciprocal sites on the left. The closest thing that I can thing of is "The Atlantic" and at "The Atlantic," as it is today, the most likely situation is just being ignored but I remember the time during which "The Atlantic" just started banning effective right-wing commenters. I'm not talking about people that had done anything bad; I'm talking about people being banned because of their right-wing viewpoints.

Anyway this seems to me to be a substantive difference in behavior between 'right-wing' and 'left-wing' sites. A more significant difference than this whole question of disgust.

And my challenge goes beyond ARM. Anyone. Suggest an inverse site.

RichardJohnson said...

Unknown
Lord have mercy! 54% Republican. The test is bogus.

Goodness gracious. Unknown, a.k.a....., is in agreement with a lot of deplorable commenters here. Such as myself, whom the test labeled at 69% Democrat. Though I once voted Democrat, I would now vote for a Democrat Presidential candidate only over my dead body.

But this test merely confirms my opinion of the "social sciences." Comparing the social sciences to science is like comparing Wonder Bread to a baguette of french bread or some such artisan bread.

Michael K said...

ARM if you know of a website, where the ratio of left-wing to right-wing commenters is 9-to-1 or something similar, in other words the opposite of what's going on here, then I'll promise to participate in that website for at least a month.

You can't. The left wing sites block disagreeing comments. I used to read and comment on Washington Monthly when Kevin Drum was blogging there.

I got a lot of obscene and abusive replies but there was some intelligent life. However, about 2004, the topic of single payer came up and I had written an analysis of healthcare reform based on study of other systems. It's linked on my blog and at Chicagoboyz. The lefties went to my blog, read it and went nuts that I did not support single payer.

The abuse got worse and then all my comments were deleted, leaving the abusive replies. Soon after, I was blocked from commenting.

Kevin went to Mother Jones, a pretty good lefty blog but I was blocked there without even having commented.

I e-mailed Kevin about it but he replied he had no control. It was the administrators.

RMc said...

"Want to annoy all your non-moderate friends and family?"

I annoy non-moderates at every opportunity. (Also moderates.)

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

mandrewa said...
Now I suspect it'll be a challenge to find such a site. I'm hoping for a place where there's actual interaction. It seems to me that it's really hard to find this.


I will concede immediately. I don't know one that I could recommend.

I do like Reddit but you have excluded that. I don't post much on Reddit but they have a great sense of humor. As far as I can tell a large fraction of the audience just goes there for the jokes in the comments section, and the dog videos, of course.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Turley's blog used to trend left but seems to have been taken over by the right.

The Wasp said...

I'm very conservative and I got 52% Democrat. I call BS.

(The Wasp's wife)

Robert Cook said...

Well,according to this test, I am 87% "Democrat." In other words, it takes a lot to disgust me! Hahahaha!

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