Not a Psychosis

For a thoughtful overview of those research studies that purport to provide psychological explanations for conservative beliefs, see Shrinkwrapped here.

Here's a snippet:

After all, the authors of such studies typically describe their results as supporting the notion that conservatives are more rigid, close minded, and incurious. While I have not made a comprehensive study of such studies, and I doubt Kristof has either, the few that I have looked at carefully have so many methodological problems and are so slanted themselves as to render them useless for actually reaching conclusions. Social Science is notoriously fuzzy and when the authors define conservative to mean rigid and close minded, it is not that difficult to find evidence to support the contention.