mainly for professional reasons as it contains a study I mentioned on liberals in a previous post. I thought about the study again when reading Taranto's Best of the Web which included my post on the Thematic Apperception Test, a projective test used by psychologists. Here is the study used to look at the traits of liberals: A 2003 paper by Rutgers sociologist Ted Goertzel offers some interesting insight into the left-wing psyche:
In the 1970s, Stanley Rothman and Robert Lichter administered Thematic Apperception Tests to a large sample of "new left" radicals (Roots of Radicalism, 1982). They found that activists were characterized by weakened self-esteem, injured narcissism and paranoid tendencies. They were preoccupied with power and attracted to radical ideologies that offered clear and unambiguous answers to their questions.
And here is what the TAT measures:
The 31 picture cards included in the TAT are used to stimulate stories or descriptions about relationships or social situations and can help identify dominant drives, emotions, sentiments, conflicts and complexes.
I loved the TAT when I was in New York doing more psychoanalytic work but I have not used it much in recent years. It is an interesting test--I will post a review of the Roots of Radicalism after I have read it. Maybe there will be more about this study that I can share.
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