Thanks, good comments. I very much agree with the first point. It is very important to pay attention to connotations. I’ll put some serious thought into what terms to use if I get around actually doing this.
I agree with the second point too. It’s not that far-fetched regarding many questions. For instance, it seems to me that people who are right-wing and left-wing, respectively, when they are young, tend to choose careers on different bases. Right-wing people tend to want to earn more money than left-wing people. Thus to some extent they earn a lot of money because they are right-wing, rather than are right-wing because they earn a lot of money.
You could give various further questions intended to distinguish “selfishness” from other explanations of the correlation; for instance, questions regarding your views have changed as a result of changes in interest. In practice, this might be hard to do efficiently, though.
I guess, though, that if you have a sufficient number of questions, and your political views consistently correlate with your interests, then it’d be hard to explain this with anything but “selfishness”.
I agree with the last point, also, that the score would need to be accompanied with a thorough discussion of how to interpret it. For instance, a left-wing feminist member of NAACP who is also a working class African-American female might be given the same selfishness score, on this test, as a low-tax anti-feminist racist who is also rich, white and male, but most people would find the former pattern of preferences less objectionable than the latter.
For instance, a left-wing feminist member of NAACP who is also a working class African-American female might be given the same selfishness score, on this test, as a low-tax anti-feminist racist who is also rich, white and male, but most people would find the former pattern of preferences less objectionable than the latter.
LOL. Don’t you want to say “most people in my social circles”? Your political preferences are on full display here.
Thanks, good comments. I very much agree with the first point. It is very important to pay attention to connotations. I’ll put some serious thought into what terms to use if I get around actually doing this.
I agree with the second point too. It’s not that far-fetched regarding many questions. For instance, it seems to me that people who are right-wing and left-wing, respectively, when they are young, tend to choose careers on different bases. Right-wing people tend to want to earn more money than left-wing people. Thus to some extent they earn a lot of money because they are right-wing, rather than are right-wing because they earn a lot of money.
You could give various further questions intended to distinguish “selfishness” from other explanations of the correlation; for instance, questions regarding your views have changed as a result of changes in interest. In practice, this might be hard to do efficiently, though.
I guess, though, that if you have a sufficient number of questions, and your political views consistently correlate with your interests, then it’d be hard to explain this with anything but “selfishness”.
I agree with the last point, also, that the score would need to be accompanied with a thorough discussion of how to interpret it. For instance, a left-wing feminist member of NAACP who is also a working class African-American female might be given the same selfishness score, on this test, as a low-tax anti-feminist racist who is also rich, white and male, but most people would find the former pattern of preferences less objectionable than the latter.
LOL. Don’t you want to say “most people in my social circles”? Your political preferences are on full display here.