Danger! Danger! Conservative’s Low-Effort Thinking

The quickness of our culture means commercials or ideas must come across to the listener within a 30-second gap. The elevator pitch existed long before the invention of a 140-character limit on Twitter. We love to get information quickly and move on with our busy lives. I’ve always thought Republicans have an advantage in this setup because their ideas fit on a bumper sticker.

Turns out a study shows low-efforts in thinking correlates to having conservative political views. Let’s finish this thought before you say something along the lines of me calling conservatives stupid.

“Not quite,” Dr. Eidelman told The Huffington Post in an email. “Our research shows that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism, not that political conservatives use low-effort thinking.”
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“Keeping people from thinking too much…or just asking them to deliberate or consider information in a cursory manner can impact people’s political attitudes, and in a way that consistently promotes political conservatism,” Dr. Eidelman said in the email.

Society in general keeps us busy. We work longer hours than other industrialized countries. We work for less money too. Kids are busy with school, sports, and video games. Our relationships take a toll on our stress levels as well. All of this prevents us from digging deeper into political issues and current events.

Then we throw in the 24-hour news cycle that treats complicated domestic policy like it is a third tier news event. We receive around the clock coverage of the latest celebrity mishap or even death but the talking points of either party get glazed over as though they both speak the truth.

The GOP utilizes this to influence the American public in ways that work against them. GOP says tax cuts and it’s your money all in one sound byte. It is certainly easier to draw that conclusion rather than looking into the ways in which taxes are spent, what programs are funded, how you and your neighbors benefit from taxes and more.

Dave Johnson at Our Future took a look at eight things the public thinks they know are true but are actually false. These things happen because people pay less attention to the story and because of the culture mentioned above.

1. President Obama tripled the deficit.
2. President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
3. President Obama bailed out the banks.
4. The stimulus didn’t work.
5. Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
6. Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
7. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
8. Government spending takes money out of the economy.

All falsehoods spread by the GOP public relations machine. Candidates and elected officials repeat them ad nauseum. So the public believes them and doesn’t do the necessary fact checking.

This is the part that worries me the most. What can our future hold if people do not weigh these very important issues carefully? They matter to each and every one of us. The Political is Personal!

Without a fact based and critical thought process in the American public, I fear we may doom ourselves. Without deep consideration we become much more susceptible to easy slogans and misdirection from our supposed leaders. Almost like a magician’s sleight of hand.