Category: Psychology and Personality Typology
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Jonathan Haidt on Why Working-Class People Vote Conservative
When a working-class person votes conservative, isn't he voting against his economic interests? That's what many lefties think and it puzzles them. Why would the workers do such a thing? This gives rise to the duping hypothesis: "the Republican party dupes people into voting against their economic interests by triggering outrage on cultural issues." Jonathan Haidt demolishes the…
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The Cerebretonic Ectomorph
He has a lot of body surface. His 'exposure' is greater than that of the other body types. So he is more sensitive. His skin is also literally thinner, which is connected with his being psychologically 'thin-skinned.'
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Are You an Introvert?
The bolded material below is taken verbatim from Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking (Crown 2012), p. 13. I then give my responses. The more affirmative responses, the more of an introvert you are. 1. I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities. Absolutely! Especially in philosophical discussions. …
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An Ideal Spouse
My opinion of Maureen Dodd went up a notch when I read this NYT column in which she quotes a Catholic priest. He proffers good advice about marriage one piece of which is: Don't marry a problem character thinking you will change him. Excellent advice, Schopenhauerian advice. You will remember his riff on the unalterability…
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The Wild Diversity of Human Types: Zelda Kaplan and Dolores Hart
Zelda lived and died for fashion, collapsing at age 95 in the front row of a fashion show. Dolores, though starting off in the vain precincts of glitz and glamour, gave it up for God and the soul. This life is vain whether or not God and the soul are illusions. Should we conclude that to…
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A Test for the Religious Sensibility
Some have the religious sensibility (inclination, predisposition, call it what you will) and some don't. Here is one of several possible tests to see if you have it. Get hold of Augustine's Confessions and Pascal's Pensées. If you read these books and they do not speak to you at all, if they do not move you,…
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Introverts and the Internet
Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto (New York: Marlowe and Co., 2003), pp. 106-107: The Internet is, for loners, an absolute and total miracle. It is, for us, the best invention of the last millennium. It educates. It entertains. It transforms. It facilitates a kind of dialogue in which we need not be…
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In Matters Political is Temperament Destiny?
Before one is a conservative or a liberal ideologically, one is a conservative or a liberal temperamentally, or by disposition. Or at least this is a thesis with which I am seriously toying, to put it oxymoronically. The idea is that temperament is a major if not the main determinant of political commitments. First comes…
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Why Are Lawyers So Unhappy?
An article by Martin P. Seligman. Now there's an aptronym for you. Selig is German for happy, blessed, blissful, although it can also mean late (verstorben) and tipsy (betrunken). So Seligman is the happy man. Nomen est omen?
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The Mighty Tetrad: Money, Power, Sex, and Recognition
Money, power, sex, and recognition form the Mighty Tetrad of human motivators, the chief goads to action here below. But none of the four is evil or the root of all evil. People thoughtlessly and falsely repeat, time and again, that money is the root of all evil. Why not say that about power, sex,…
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Liberal-Left Bias Among the Social Psychologists
Here. Excerpts, with emphases and a couple of comments by MavPhil. Let's look at the 3 very liberal social sciences: anthropology, sociology, and psychology. These 3 fields have always leaned left, but things really changed in the 1960s. The civil rights struggle, the brutality inflicted upon peaceful marchers, the Viet Nam war, the assassinations of black leaders……
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Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy
This article is positively depressing. What do you prescribe, doc?
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Bigot and Anti-Bigot
If the bigot unreasonably and uncritically rejects what is different just because it is different, the anti-bigot unreasonably and uncritically accepts the different just because it is different. No doubt some conservatives are bigots. But some liberals are too: they unreasonably and uncritically reject conservatism. What's more, there are plenty of liberal anti-bigots whose knee-jerk…
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Taxomania
Is it a word? If not, I hereby introduce it. It is the strong need, bordering on the obsessive, to classify. A central characteristic of the INTP.
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Freud on Illusion, Delusion, Error, and Religion
I found the discussion in the thread appended to Is There a 'No God' Delusion? very stimulating and useful. My man Peter is the 'rock' upon which good discussions are built. (I shall expatiate later on the sense in which Lupu is also a 'wolf.') The thread got me thinking about what exactly a delusion is. It…