Wednesday, March 22, 2006

So Now We Know: Rush Limbaugh Was a Whiny Little Brat

In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality. "The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity. The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective."

The research has been published in the "Journal of Research Into Personality" and is bound to send some formerly whiny kids right over the cliff (thanks to Irmaly for sending this link).

We hope Professor Block is ready for the reaction in Right Blogostan. He might want to don an unusually thick raincoat, in anticipation of epic foaming at the mouth.

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