From the Liberalization of American Colleges and Unis thread:



This would make for an interesting discussion, and it deserves its own thread so that it doesn't derail SoCaliente's thread.

1. Is it true that liberals and conservatives are generally drawn to certain fields?
2. What draws them to those fields?

I don't think you can say that either/or group selects one type of career over another.

I've been a member of the military, I've been an entertainer, and I'm currently a businessman. Then again, I'm a moderate, so maybe the fact that I'm "in the middle" means I have tendencies to both?

This may be a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" debate. I would argue that a person's career lures them to a certain political affiliation. . .not the other way around.
I know people that been relatively liberal and have joined the military only to emerge as a strong conservative in a few years. "Educators, journalists, entertainers, and artist", unless you are a super star are not paid as much as they should, which would make them liberally sympathetic. "Businesspeople and engineers" it could be argued occupy a higher tax bracket and therefore are inclined to side with a more Republican state of mind.

-Kisov

I would agree with the chicken and egg philosophy- the medical field is a prime example. I rarely run into a conservative nurse. Occasionally a conservative doctor. We had this discussion at work the other night (talk about timely! ) - and we all agreed that those that identified themselves as conservative were usually darn worthless in our field. Sounds kinda harsh, but IMO now, you have to have an air of judging others behaviors to be politically conservative as defined in this day and age. Besides that, so much of medicine is public health, and how do you justify cut backs to poeple you see suffering for no fault of thier own day in and day out? You can't be empathetic and believe this way, you would have to be schizophrenic yourself!

So I think the field of work forces you one way or the other. In the military, I was totally apolitical. I was also very young, and only really thought about chasing women, drinking and fast cars, and the rest of my money I wasted! But the poeple giving the orders HAD to have some kind of very black and white with no shades of grey thinking, which is, conservative.

Regarding the "chicken and egg" idea -- I think it may be a little of both. I think for a "liberal" or a "conservative" career to shape opinion, there has to be some openness to those ideas on some level, even if not known at the time.

Just to cite my own example:

I grew up in a very conservative environment (community, religion, home, etc). At the age of 18 I considered myself a conservative, and I voted Republican in my first eligible election.

The next few years brought me into contact with liberal ideas (friends, education, etc.) and my leanings started to turn in the opposite direction. From a distance from my childhood, I could see that I had some liberal tendencies from the earliest ages : concern for the environment, the suffering of those less fortunate, equality issues for all races and genders, etc. But if I had never been exposed to liberalism and stayed in the environment I was raised in, would I have become a liberal at some point? I'm not sure.

And if I hadn't had some natural liberal tendencies, would any exposure (career or otherwise) been enough to convince me to give up previous convictions?

Questions, questions . . .

I think its combination of nature and nuture, if you will.

The common denominator may be personality. We do know that personality type is a means to determine appropriate careers. Is there a correlation between touchy feely types and liberal politics? Is there a correlation between thinking types and conservatism?

Intuitively, certain political issues would seem to fit in with some personality types than others. I would bet someone has done some research to determine a relationship between politics and personality.

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I looked at AmericasDebate personality thread and looked for some sort of pattern between personality types and politics type. The only one I could see was the all but one of the conservatives were 'J' s. Still, there were an equal number of 'J' s and 'P' s who listed themselves as liberal. Almost all people here are 'N' s. My hypothesis on 'T' s and 'F' s having a relationship to politics was proven wrong.