I don't know how much I would make of this study that shows that of announced political affiliations in the United States, Democrats are the ones who would seem to be best at keeping their promises, at least in so far as wedding vows are concerned. Ah, hell, I might not believe in this kind of thing but why not make hay of such a ubiquitous belief among the secular and sciency? Here it is from the Guardian with my comments.
Democrats are less inclined than Republicans to cheat on their spouses, according to researchers who matched voter records to accounts hacked from a US website that specialises in extramarital affairs.
The study of 80,000 voters in five US states found that Democrats used the Ashley Madison adultery website substantially less than Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and unaffiliated voters. Libertarians consistently ranked as the site’s most frequent clients.
The results highlight an apparent paradox where those with more conservative views and supposedly stricter attitudes towards sex seem happier to hop into bed with someone outside their relationship than more liberal types.
“Our results are perhaps the strongest evidence yet that people with more sexually conservative values, although they claim to act accordingly, are more sexually deviant in practice than their more sexually liberal peers,” the researchers write in Archives of Sexual Behaviour.
Well, as that "apparent paradox" rests on the self-reported morality of such people and they are obviously lying about their moral standards, what's paradoxical is that anyone would believe any science that depends on such self reporting. I would point out that if the conclusion of the study is true and Democrats (standing in for traditional American style liberals) are more honest when it comes to keeping their promises than Republicans (crooks and liars), Libertarians (egomanical baby-men) and Greens (Quislings) then wouldn't that entirely impeach any answers they gave on other questions? And why do the scientists who conduct such science never figure that's a problem with their reported results?
Me, I'm happy to have people believe that Republicans, Libertarians and Greens are undependable liars but that's not science, it's politics.
The equation of adultery with liberalism is kind of disgusting, when did breaking promises and risking all of the associated suffering for other people involved in adultery become "liberal"? Oh, yeah, when genuine liberalism was corrupted by the amorality of "enlightenment" liberalism. Real liberals don't do things that hurt other people or at least they know they shouldn't, which might well account for those who successfully keep their promises and don't wreck their families, infecting their loved ones with STDs, etc.
Kodi Arfer, a behavioural scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles, and Jason Jones, a sociologist at Stony Brook University in New York, linked the 2012 voter registration records for California, Florida, Kansas, New York and Oklahoma to credit card payments made by people living in those states to Ashley Madison between 2008 and 2015. The payment details were released in 2015 when a group called the Impact Team hacked millions of Ashley Madison accounts.
Of the five states looked at in the study, California had the greatest proportion of Ashley Madison users, with one in 560 voters holding an account. But in this state, political allegiance was only marginally linked to who signed up, with Libertarians making up one in 250 account holders and Democrats making up about one in 700. The rest all fell in between.
According to the study, the smallest percentage of the website’s clients lived in Oklahoma, where only one in 943 voters had made payments to the site. But the state, which has backed a Republican in every presidential election since 1968, boasted the greatest political split in users, with fewer than one in 1,500 Democrats holding an Ashley Madison account compared with one in 700 Republicans.
Across the board, Libertarians made up the greatest proportion of Ashley Madison clients. In the four states that had Libertarians, namely California, Florida, Kansas and New York, about one in 250 of the site’s clients had registered as Libertarians.
Anyone who watched footage from the Libertarian Party's national convention will find this not at all surprising. Libertarians are mostly the worst cases of arrested 12-year-old boy development with raging issues of assholishness that you're likely to find outside of the trolling of this blog and the blogs where such boy-men congregate. Apparently, according to the study findings here, those who congregate at "liberal" blogs are atypical of American liberalism or at least of the opposition to Republican-fascism. Which is not surprising to me but it may have been twelve-years back in observing that phenomenon.
The study does not shed light on why Republicans might be more likely to have affairs than Democrats, but Arfer has a couple of theories. The first is that, thanks to more restricted sex education and discussion, right-leaning people may be less well-informed about sex and sexuality, and so have poorer sexual self-control. The second is that people who are more interested in taboo activities declare themselves Republicans, and profess to have stricter attitudes, to deflect suspicion.
But another explanation is possible. Political party allegiance may simply be a proxy for wealth, and Republicans tend to be better off than Democrats. “It stands to reason that wealthier people should be more likely to use Ashley Madison, which can be expensive,” Arfer said. “So the party effect we observed could be driven by income instead of, or in addition to, ideology.”
I've always said the rich were generally trashier than the poor.
There is always the possibility that some Ashley Madison clients are plunged into turmoil by the realisation that their behaviour is in direct conflict to the standards they hold most dear. For such people, the authors have some suggestions that may help. “Such a person either needs to change his behaviour or change his values,” said Arfer. “That’s easier said than done, but simply learning more about human sexuality could help, particularly if my hypothesis about worse sexual self-control is right.”
Introduces a conscience not otherwise in evidence among Republican-fascists, Libertarians and Greens. If they developed such a conscience, they would find that it was impossible to remain Republican-fascists (crooks and liars), Libertarians (egomaniacle baby-men) or Greens (Quislings)
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