Kitchen Cabinet reports the result of an interesting study about Southerners:
Visit an American university, bump into random students in the corridor and loudly call each one “asshole.” Then measure their reactions. This is what a team of psychologists did in a controlled experiment at the University of Michigan. The results were most interesting. Students from the southern part of the United States reacted far more violently and aggressively than those from the North, were shown to have much higher levels of cortisone and testosterone, and in tests regularly suggested more belligerent solutions to problems.
“The researchers speculate,” writes the Cabinet, “that a lingering emphasis on honor makes southerners more sensitive to insults than northerners and more likely to respond to them with violence.”
How about the possibility, which seems eminently reasonable to me, that in the case of the Southerners the accusations were more likely to be inaccurate?
Or maybe it’s just that, as we gun nuts are fond of observing, an armed society is a polite society.
“More sensitive to insults” or “less likely to tolerate assholes”?
I just want to know how they a) determined “southernness” (did they control for which part of “the south” the students were from? How long they’d lived there? Where they’d lived the first N years of life, or the latest N?) and b) how many of the students let the researchers do blood tests?
I ran into this Independent article from an asshat last night, and I can’t help but notice that we aren’t really told anything about the study itself; not even the name of the researchers or the size of the samples.
This leads me, quite naturally, to disregard the entire thing as a giant pile. And i’m not even a Violent Southerner or nothin’!
I like John’s take. We aren’t a-holes and we know we aren’t. And watch your language; there are ladies present.
First it was conservatives and now it is southerners. Those busy liberal researchers are really working hard. Of course if they used blacks or Hispanics as subjects of their experiments do you think they just might be accused of being bigoted?
There are three groups that the exquisitely “tolerant” Left is not so tolerant of: 1) Christians–though only white ones; 2) heterosexual men–though only white ones; and 3) Southerners–though, naturally, only white ones.
Here’s a test: Imagine a fire and brimstone preacher from the deep South; a philandering hypocrite and demagogue; a true-to-life Elmer (Fudd) Gantry. Could this person ever be a luminary of the Left? Ask Jesse Jackson.
No Words
Yeah, I’m pissed. I have one quick question. Did they control for PMS in women? On a normal day, I’d just bitch at them to no end. When I’m suffering, I’d punch them and knee them where it counts. If
How did the researchers get such an experiment past the school’s human subjects review board? One of the usual requirements is that people be informed that they are part of an experiment and that they have the right to not participate. I don’t see where or how this was done.
It’s simple Brian. The University doesn’t consider white southerns to be human.
I’d like to see this same experiment at my old High School, Ramona HS, Riverside CA (a school of which 1/3 came from the barrio), that would be a real test of testosterone. Assholes.