Statistical Support for ‘Leftism as Mental Illness’
A comprehensive study on the issue of Leftist mental illness was conducted this year by Emil Kirkegaard [See: ‘Mental illness and the left’
https://archive.vn/a6CQk ]. The study used less abstract criteria than the aforementioned thinkers, and consisted of straight-to-the-point questions, which essentially boiled down to “are you mentally ill, yes or no?”
Abstract:
A search of the available variables resulted in 5 items measuring one’s own mental illness (e.g., ”Do you have any emotional or mental disability?”). All of these items were weakly associated with left-wing political ideology as measured by self-report, with especially high rates seen for the “extremely liberal” group. These results mostly held up in regressions that adjusted for age, sex, and race. For the variable with the most data (n = 11,338), the difference in the mental illness measure between “extremely liberal” and “extremely conservative” was 0.39 d. Temporal analysis showed that the relationship between mental illness, happiness, and political ideology has existed in the GSS data since the 1970s and still existed in the 2010s. Within-study meta-analysis of all the results found that extreme liberals had a 150% increased rate of mental illness compared to moderates. The finding of increased mental illness among left-wingers is congruent with numerous findings based on related constructs, such as positive relationships between conservatism, religiousness and health in general.
