(Originally posted to Politics at EraBlog on Sun, 27 Jul 2003 02:22:19 GMT)

I found an interesting piece about what makes a political conservative.

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

• Fear and aggression

• Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity

• Uncertainty avoidance

• Need for cognitive closure

• Terror management

This was linked to from the Dean Blog's copy of Howard Dean's July 25th speech, The President Has Misled Us.