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Kids are the cutest Rorschach inkblot tests. If you want to get a sense of people's "values," the go-to contemporary term for social mores, there's no better way than to ask them what they think children should be taught. And, in fact, that's exactly what Pew did in a recent survey, asking a panel of respondents about the importance of lessons about "responsibility," "creativity," and "perseverance."

The results reinforce a certain Protestant-work-ethic caricature of America. Out of 12 choices, "being responsible," "hard work," and "being well-mannered" were consistently ranked as the most important values to teach to children. Close runners-up included "persistence" and "independence," the other qualities on the list that evoke American self-reliance.

The data also present a familiar caricature of "liberals" and "conservatives." Based on a longer survey that classified respondents along an ideological spectrum from left to right, the researchers found that "consistent conservatives" were more likely to prioritize obedience and religious faith in particular, while "consistent liberals" emphasized tolerance, creativity, curiosity, and empathy for others. They were also significantly less likely than other respondents to rate "hard work" as one of the most important things to teach childrenthey ranked 13 percentage points lower than "consistent conservatives."

Views on Empathy, Curiosity, Creativity, Faith, Tolerance, and Obedience Across the Ideological Spectrum

These results track closely with the vague sense impressions people often use to describe the poles of American culture and politics: disciplined, religion-loving, straight-laced conservatives vs. artsy, smarty pants, soft-hearted liberals. The results for "empathy," "helping others," and "hard work" seem particularly potent. "Of course conservatives want to slash food-stamp spending," one could imagine a staunch liberal saying. "They don't teach their children to empathize with others." Alternatively: "Of course liberals want to dump money into food stamps. They don't care about hard work."

That's a powerful and dangerous thing about survey-based social science. It can offer evidence that, yes, the associative thinking Americans use to understand their peers' values and priorities does have some basis in reality. But it can also reify stereotypes about how people see the world, attaching hard numbers to highly interpretive, charged concepts.

"Tolerance" is a great example: 88 percent of "consistently liberal" respondents rated it as an important thing to teach kids, with 22 percent rating it among their top three values. Among "consistent conservatives," only 41 percent placed significance on teaching tolerance, with barely anyone including that in their list of most important lessons. But it seems unlikely that most conservatives are encouraging their kids to commit hate crimes and refuse to be in the same classroom as kids who are different from them. Perhaps those respondents interpret "tolerance" as a buzzword used by some left-leaning organizations to advocate positions like support for affirmative action, or maybe exclusion of prayer in public schools. This interpretation may or may not have fidelity to what "tolerance" actually means, but that's the whole point: The words people use as shorthand for "values" actually represent complex constellations of cultural and political thought. At least in part, this survey reinforces stereotypes about liberals and conservatives because it relies on concepts that have been continuously appropriated and transformed for ideological purposes.

That's not to say the results aren't interesting. Does it seem important that the proportion of women who value empathy was 14 percentage points higher than the proportion of men, or that Millennials were half as likely to rate "religious faith" as one of the most important things to teach kids compared to people over 30? Yes. Is it curious that 62 percent of white people said curiosity is important, compared to 48 percent of Hispanicsor, actually, that anyone at all said that curiosity doesn't matter that much for kids? Yes. Does it seem intuitively correct that people older than 65 were really into obedient children? Again, yes.

But do we really know that liberals are more empathetic than conservatives? No, probably not.

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Do Liberals Really Care More About Empathy Than Conservatives?

From a California law that mandates textbooks mention the significance of President Obamas election to a Virginia textbook that claims thousands of black soldiers fought for the Confederacy to another that teaches creationism, textbooks have long been a source of controversy in America.

The latest example of textbook politics brings us to Texas, where a panel of experts commissioned by a liberal advocacy groupfound a batch of new history books that were up for review by the states Board of Education promoted pro-Christian religious and conservative political views.

Among the dozens of lessons the group highlighted as biased are passages suggesting segregated schools werent too bad, Affirmative Action recipients are un-American, taxes for social programs havent improved society, and that Moses inspired American democracy.

"In all fairness, it's clear that the publishers struggled with these flawed standards and still managed to do a good job in some areas," Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, which oversaw the review, in a statement. "On the other hand, a number of textbook passages essentially reflect the ideological beliefs of politicians on the state board rather than sound scholarship and factual history."

Some 104 new textbooks on subjects ranging from geography to history to US government are up for review by the Texas Board of Education, which must approve new textbooks for the states 5-plus million public school students in November. Texas textbooks have long been a source of contention, and this time both liberals and conservatives complained about perceived biases in the books, with some liberals crying foul over pro-Christian lessons and conservatives complaining of anti-American and pro-Muslim biases.

Among the complaints from both parties were passages that depicted minimum wage as a controversial legacy of the New Deal, marginalized or lionized Reagan, downplayed the achievements of Hispanics, presented pro-Israeli arguments on Middle East conflicts, incorrectly depicted jihad, and overemphasized the influence of the Ten Commandments and other Christian tenets on the American Revolution.

"We do our students a disservice when we scrub history clean of unpleasant truths," Jacqueline Jones, chairwoman of the University of Texas History Department, told the AP,"and when we present an inaccurate view of the past that promotes a simple-minded, ideologically driven point of view."

Conservatives lashed back, saying textbooks shouldnt be held to artificial standards of political correctness.

I think our students deserve textbooks that are historically accurate and not politically correct," Amy Jo Baker, a retired history teacher and former social studies director for the San Antonio Independent School District, told the AP, adding that she wants textbooks that "reflect not America as the bad guy, but America as an exceptional nation.

While debates over Texas textbooks are nothing new, the fight highlights a larger political battle Texans are engaging in over academic standards and the shaping of statewide curricula.

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Liberals and conservatives both object to new Texas textbooks

Teaching moral development is a process, the lessons more complex as the child grows up. "You can teach the little ones right and wrong pretty easily. As they get older, the areas of gray become more complex. We believe that besides being intentional, it needs to be systematic," said Sipos of her organization, a national nonprofit that works primarily with schools on character education.

istockphoto.com/mediaphotos

While parents take seriously the task of teaching children values, a new Pew Research Center survey released Thursday shows a gulf between how conservatives and liberals, women and men, young and old and different races order the values they believe children should be taught.

The report, "Teaching the Children: Sharp Ideological Differences, Some Common Ground," looked at 12 different qualities parents might try to inculcate in children. It found chasms between liberals and conservatives, but also near universal agreement despite ideological differences.

"We found a remarkable amount of consensus about certain traits responsibility, hard work, helping others," said Jocelyn Kiley, Pew associate director of research and one of the report's authors. "There are also some rather striking differences across ideological groups."

People categorized as "consistent conservatives," for example, tended to place a high premium on teaching children religious faith, while "consistent liberals" did not. The consistent liberals found great value in teaching tolerance, which was much lower on the conservatives' priority list. Curiosity ranks high on liberal rankings, but low for conservatives. Obedience comes in last on the consistent liberal list and was ranked fifth among consistent conservatives.

The report noted that women and men had similar priorities, although women listed helping others and empathy as important more often than men did. Women put a "somewhat higher priority" on teaching religious faith.

Breaking the priorities down by age showed differences in valuing obedience 68 percent of those 65 and older prioritize it, compared to 56 percent for those younger than 30.

World as classroom

Numerous surveys, studies and organizations have looked at how kids learn character and values.

Read this article:
Liberals teach kids tolerance over faith; conservatives teach kids faith over tolerance, new survey finds

Teaching moral development is a process, the lessons more complex as the child grows up. "You can teach the little ones right and wrong pretty easily. As they get older, the areas of gray become more complex. We believe that besides being intentional, it needs to be systematic," said Sipos of her organization, a national nonprofit that works primarily with schools on character education.

istockphoto.com/mediaphotos

While parents take seriously the task of teaching children values, a new Pew Research Center survey released Thursday shows a gulf between how conservatives and liberals, women and men, young and old and different races order the values they believe children should be taught.

The report, "Teaching the Children: Sharp Ideological Differences, Some Common Ground," looked at 12 different qualities parents might try to inculcate in children. It found chasms between liberals and conservatives, but also near universal agreement despite ideological differences.

"We found a remarkable amount of consensus about certain traits responsibility, hard work, helping others," said Jocelyn Kiley, Pew associate director of research and one of the report's authors. "There are also some rather striking differences across ideological groups."

People categorized as "consistent conservatives," for example, tended to place a high premium on teaching children religious faith, while "consistent liberals" did not. The consistent liberals found great value in teaching tolerance, which was much lower on the conservatives' priority list. Curiosity ranks high on liberal rankings, but low for conservatives. Obedience comes in last on the consistent liberal list and was ranked fifth among consistent conservatives.

The report noted that women and men had similar priorities, although women listed helping others and empathy as important more often than men did. Women put a "somewhat higher priority" on teaching religious faith.

Breaking the priorities down by age showed differences in valuing obedience 68 percent of those 65 and older prioritize it, compared to 56 percent for those younger than 30.

World as classroom

Numerous surveys, studies and organizations have looked at how kids learn character and values.

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Liberals teach kids tolerance over faith; conservatives teach kids faith over tolerance, according to new Pew survey

Are these men sniffing? (REUTERS/Jim Bourg)

We have long known that liberals are more likely to choose other liberals as romantic partners and that conservatives alsotend to prefermates with similar political viewpoints. Indeed, other than religion, ideology is a strongercorrelate than other traits in the selection of long-term partners. But how does this work?

A new article in the American Journal of Political Science by Rose McDermott (Brown), Dustin Tingley (Harvard), and Peter Hatemi (Penn State)suggests that the explanation could be that liberals and conservatives smell differently and that each prefers the smell of ideologically similar persons. That body odor influences attractionis well-established. The authors argue that smell signals alsoserve other functions, such asdisease avoidance, cheater detection, defense against outgroups,and social cohesion. These may be related to political ideology. For example, they note:

[..] greater disgust sensitivity, which is intimately interconnected with the neural substrates of smell, predicts more conservative positions, particularly around issues involving morality and sexual reproduction. These underlying, physically experienced predilections can come to be expressed as opinions on such topics as abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, and a host of other ideological topics

They then claim:

If social attitudes are linked to odor[..]then one mechanism that odor preferencestransfer from parents to children may operate throughtheir mothers choice of mate. In this way, social processesmay drive some of the pathways by which individualscome to prefer those whose ideological smellmatches their own.

The researchers askeda group of ideologically diverse people to rate the body scent of both liberals and conservatives (without seeing them in person). On average, ideologically similar people appreciated the scent of similarly disposed people more. So, scent could be a way in which we subconsciously select mates of similar dispositions.

Before the more creative among us go outand create perfumes for liberals and conservatives, I should note that the effect is very small and teeters on the edge of what we would normally call statistically significant. That is: we are not as certain as we would ideally like to be that the finding isnt a consequence of mere chance. There are probably other more important mechanisms that produce sorting on ideology than smell. Still, its an innovative new study on the link between biology and politics.

Erik Voeten is the Peter F. Krogh Associate Professor of Geopolitics and Justice in World Affairs at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government.

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Monkey Cage: Liberals smell better to other liberals than to conservatives