Men who are physically strong are more likely to have right wing political views

reply to post by BobM88

Here's the deal. My political compasss says I'm in the company of people like Ghandi, a moderate libertarian liberal. Lately, I've been doing push ups. Does this mean it'll make me conservative?

Here's the irony. When I was younger, I did push ups because I wanted to look strong to impress girls. But now I'm doing it to stay in shape and be healthier. I know I'm getting older. As we age, we tend to lose muscle mass and gain fat. This is for a variety of reasons, including lifestyle and even our partner's habits. So, from a logical perspective, I have to combat this trend by vigorously attacking it.

Doing similar things but for different reasons.

I can never be an extreme anything. I analyze my own actions too much. I listen to others too much. This is why I respond so strongly to others I disagree with. Deep down, I'm listening to them. And yet there's a part of me that wants to disregard them and step on their opinions and look the other way.

I found this quote very interesting:

........
Wealthy men of this group showed less resistance to redistribution, while poor men showed less support.
............

You would think that if somebody showed stronger support for an issue that they'd resist the opposite side more, but this research seems to suggest reality doesn't (often?) comfortably fit our expectations.

Well, I have been very strong since I was in my late teens, doing hard work and loving it. I can't say I had right wing political views because of that. It is funny, I have some right wing and some left wing views on things, I can fit into some conversations about politics and agree and disagree with other conversations. To consider someone as right wing from one conversation, something many people do on this site, is totally inaccurate. We do not have to be either right wing or left wing as we are being conditioned to be, we are humans capable of choosing which wing to wave with. These studies and surveys people are taking are a bunch of crap. Most have an agenda behind them and the questions are loaded to try to prove something they are thinking is real.

I call this a hoax that millions of people believe. If you believe these kinds of things they become reality.

Makes sense to me. Homosexual behavior is more feminine by a significant amount. Also, those people who are lazy, don't want to work and want to live off the government freebies and the hard work of others are liberals as well. Give to the losers is the motto of liberals. The easy way out like abortion also seems to follow the liberal philosophy as well.

People who work hard and are able to face challenges might be more inclined to be conservative because they want to benefit from their hard work and not be taxed to death so others can benefit without effort. They have more backbone in general and are probably less likely to take antidepressants because they cannot cope with reality.

I never thought of myself as conservative as I am not a warmonger and the Republicans seems to waste money with reckless abandon. I am not political at all, but I do despise those who work the system (I know too many who do- even my own family). Sure, I would like to stay home on my butt and not do a damn thing but I have a family to support and want to instill good values upon my children.

Golden

reply to post by GoldenVoyager



Thank god we have people like you who vote.
What would we do without that kind of reasoning?

reply to post by sealing


Just look at the world today. It looks nothing like the world I grew up in. Everyone is medicated, especially women, even kids, double standards everywhere. People mesmerized and zombified and controlled by their newest cell phone. Personal face to face communication a thing of the past. Women marry, cheat, then take half of all you have an alimony sometimes for life. Being gay is now chic and cool. What happened to procreating naturally? Our personal rights have all but vanished. Weakness is encouraged, 47% of the people receiving government freebies. Yeah, what a great and fair and just world. I don't my one vote in the wind can do much to prevent the decline.

Strength, backbone, and integrity are traits that are becoming extinct.

reply to post by BobM88


This study is hilarious. Every conservative I personally know is obese and suffering heart conditions of some sort.

Maybe they are confusing fat and wheezy with strong?

And don't bother with the "I'm a conservative and I can bench ____"... because I don't care and I can turn around and say "I'm a liberal and I can bench ____". Doesn't matter. Really, I understand that broad generalizations are never 100% true but they are obvious enough in America to completely refute this "study".

Originally posted by Fromabove
I am of a medium build with a high IQ, and have a dominant personality. I am a conservative right winger. I'm not sure if it's so much the physical strength thing as it is the personality of strength. Lefties tend to come in and go out with the tide or blow around in the wind a lot.

edit on 16-5-2013 by Fromabove because: (no reason given)

Hey WTF?????!!!!???

You just described me to a T!!

I am a ripped 5 10 and 155 LBS...lol ok I am scrawny, but quite fit, and have a high IQ, and a type A personality, and I wouldn't describe myself as right wing, but have been called a republicam many more times than a moderate.

I think it is more personality type than it is physical type.

Seems like a sorry ass3d way of saying strong dumb republicans, weak smart dems.

Just my 2 cents.

Ok I re-read the linked article.

It seems to be saying this:
1. Tribes/Families have to determine distribution of resources
2. Physical strength is a (historical) proxy for ability to defend and acquire resources
3. In the past, we settled disputes by shows of physical strength

This means that the stronger the male, the better he's able to defend and acquire resources and win disputes. So it's evolutionary. It's selection pressure. There's a reason to favor strong males.

So nature tried to produce strong males for probably millions of years. There's even evidence that woman find muscles attractive or even sexy. In fact, it's common knowledge that homosexual men have a fondness for muscular men. Studies have shown that the brain of a homosexual man has some similarities to heterosexual woman, so it makes you wonder, eh? In fact, I've seen a variety of studies. One shows woman prefer men with upper-body to leg ratios that make his upper-body bigger. I also saw a study that showed they prefer the triangular shape (big shoulders). Yet another that shows they prefer tall males. However, because strength is decreasingly useful in modern civilization, woman are turning to other traits like commitment and emotional intelligence when looking for a partner. Physical strong men are consistently shown to have more sexual partners, but they're falling out of favor when it comes to the bigger picture.

So basically tall and big shouldered men with big upper body to leg ratio and toned muscle frame.

By why would this apply today? Physical strength is not as important anymore. You don't need big strength to socialize and to graduate college and to find a good job. So why would it by meaningful?

My guess is that the researchers hypothesized that there're still lingering affects from the past. For example, our ancestors needed to eat a lot to survive winter and famine. This led to evolution giving us a strong appetite. But that trait is now leading to increasing obesity as people seem unable to control their food consumption habits. I think there're other examples. For instance, our brain is hardwired to dumbly chase things and socialize and get rewards, but now computer games have addicted millions across the world by sabotaging this mechanism and giving people easy access but without the other benefits of RL (like exercise and real acquisition of resources) that allows us to survive on this planet.

Maybe strong men feel more empowered somehow. Perhaps evolution linked our emotional state to our strength? So men who're stronger will tend to feel better about things and more independnet? Or perhaps it's even more ominous. Maybe strong men are just more broadly healthier? How is that, you might ask? Well, evolution favored strong men. Any dent or misaligned gears will lead to problems. It might not even have anything to do with genetics. And even genetics can sometimes give you traits that're not favored. Nature is not a machine, but it does have rough designs for things (the average dna of humans). If you fall outside the range of average then the rough design might fail to produce.

There might be in fact some benefits to strong men still remaining. I wouldn't say it's a bad thing. I'd say that eating too much and being addicted to games is bad. But being strong? No.

(sorry for all my speculating and tl;dr)

Sorry for being gone from my thread for awhile...darn boss wants me to actually get some work done.

The first thing that entered my mind when I read this was:

"What a freakin' waste of money".

Right or Left, I think we can almost all agree that this study was pretty pointless.

I wonder if there is a correlation between being "right handed" and "left handed" with being "right winged" or "left winged".....I know that B. Obama and B. Clinton are left handed so it would be an interesting study.

These guys are your typical American right wing conservatives, really macho men.

reply to post by BobM88

Men who are physically strong are more likely to have right wing political views

More stereotyping.
More studies by more so-called ';experts'.

Sounds to me like more good material to be recycled into bathroom tissue.

Originally posted by BobM88
Sorry for being gone from my thread for awhile...darn boss wants me to actually get some work done.

The first thing that entered my mind when I read this was:

"What a freakin' waste of money".

Right or Left, I think we can almost all agree that this study was pretty pointless.

The people who got paid for this crap don't think the research is a waste of money.

"are more likely to" is not stereotyping...

Many people seem to not understand statistics well. Statistical studies do not give facts, they give you likelyhoods. If you take 100 random strong men from the streets, it is very likely that more than 50 of them are right, although it is not a fact. The more strong men you ask, the more such tendency comes out.. It is that simple.

Personally I am not very surprised about it. Strength often shows more competitive spirit, more testosterone, more willingness to do hard work in order to gain results.

Although I do not fit that particular study. Strong Upper Body, but Left-Wing.

I wonder if the correlation breaks down when you compare people inside the same geographic area. What might be going on is that Republican strongholds in the south have really, really high obesity rates. Since obese people eat excess calories, they also get a bit more muscle mass.

Though, they said this doesn't apply to women. So, that breaks that idea.

Originally posted by BobM88


I gotta say that I just don't know about this study.

Logically,....

Strong men are right wing, weak men are left wing.
Rich men are right wing, poor men are left wing.
Males are right wing, females are left wing.
Whites are right wing, blacks are left wing.
He that has more is right wing, he that has less is left wing.

You can predict these things, simply on the basis of what people possess today.

He that has something, is more likely to want to keep it, and join the side that protects what he already has, and he that needs something, is more likely to want to get it, and join the side that promotes taking it away from the others that have.

This is a no brainier.

If you're born rich, be republican. If you're born poor, be democrat. When the poor become rich, they change party affiliation.

The man who walks into the gym a democrat, comes out a republican, if he has the will to stay the course and build up his strength. And when an unfortunate illness strikes him, and knocks him down, he gives up his republican ideology, when he sees that medical bill, and returns to become a democrat, once again.

I just bench-pressed a couple of neocons, and now, in the tradition of vegan progressives, will cook some lentils and rice. All in a day's work.

"When you guys get home and face an antiwar protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a p*ssy." --Commanding General 1st Marine Division

Maybe the General knew this already before the study.

reply to post by BobM88


How ironic.

They don't realise I guess that liberalism came from the right, not the left.

Neo-liberalism came about in the 1800's as way to appease the workers. The workers at that time were predominately socialist, the labour movement was a socialist movement.

Socialism is worker ownership, not the welfare state.

The middle and upper middle classes, guilty because of the conditions of the working class, and the capitalist class fearing revolution, supported a state social safety net while maintaining the establishment capitalist class and the capitalist economy.

Some liberals in the 1800's appropriated the term socialism for their ideas, working class socialists dismissed them as socialists. In fact the reason Marx used the term communism was because of that...

Marx and Engels used the terms Communism and Socialism to mean precisely the same thing. They used “Communism” in the early years up to about 1875, and after that date mainly used the term “Socialism.” There was a reason for this. In the early days, about 1847-1850, Marx and Engels chose the name “Communism” in order to distinguish their ideas from Utopian, reactionary or disreputable movements then in existence [liberals], which called themselves “Socialist.” Later on, when these movements disappeared or went into obscurity, and when, from 1870 onwards, parties were being formed in many countries under the name Social-Democratic Party or Socialist Party, Marx and Engels reverted to the words Socialist and Socialism. Thus when Marx in 1875 (as mentioned by Lenin) wanted to make the distinction referred to by the Daily Worker, he spoke of the “first phase of Communist society” and “a higher phase of Communist society.” Engels, writing in the same year, used the term Socialism, not Communism, and habitually did so afterwards. Marx also fell, more or less closely, into line with this change of names and terms, using sometimes the one, sometimes the other, without any distinction of meaning.

www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/socialist_equality.htm

reply to post by SQUEALER


Very well said... good elaboration and pictorials.

The poor do get much better medical care. I cannot afford my medical co=pays and deductibles because I cannot afford an expensive HMO. The poor get free medical, free ER and have nothing to lose. They get the help they need. The ultra rich may be able to afford it, but even the upper middle class cannot afford doctor and hospital bills...

The whole system is broken IMO... but at least I work my butt off because it feels like the right thing to do according to my ethics.

Still, you perfectly paraphrased that people protect what they have or want what they don't.