leanings

[ragani]

I thought this test was interesting. I don't usually think much about where I fall on the political scales, and shy away from most extremes either way, so my results, although not terribly surprising, were thought provoking. You may want to do the test before reviewing my results.

Comments

[terpsichoros.livejournal.com]

This test has an interesting bias to it; over on my political blog I wrote:

Quizzes purporting to measure one's political beliefs along two dimensions are common, though the best-known one before this one was the quiz from Advocates for Self-Government popularized by the Libertarian Party.

The Political Compass quiz is flawed by plotting general political beliefs on one axis against cultural beliefs on the other, yet pretending that the cultural beliefs are political ones also. For example, on many of the "cultural" questions, my personal beliefs are more conservative than my beliefs in what the law should or should not allow. I believe that there is far too much sex in advertising and on tv shows aimed at kids, etc., but I also strongly believe that the government should regulate that less than they do now. The way that question is posed, I give the "authoritarian" answer, though my political beliefs are libertarian. The economics questions mostly don't suffer from this flaw, though there are a few false dichotomies which reflect a lack of understanding of libertarian/capitalist economic theories. A free-market supporter will argue that globalisation benefits both people and large corporations, and that the question as posed is impossible to answer.

The "left" end of the blogosphere is almost all "libertarian" rather than authoritarian, but that also reflects the Political Compass' not asking questions about authoritarian tendencies among the political left. How many left-wing bloggers would move in the "authoritarian" direction if questions regarding displays of the Confederate flag or "hate speech" were being asked?

Re:

[ragani.livejournal.com]

That is part of what I found interesting about this. Most tests like this have the problem of asking questions that are about far too complex an issue and cannot be easily answered by Strongly Agree/Agree/Disagree/Strongly Disagree options. I find this to be the case for all those memes where you answer a bunch of questions that are clearly directed at one of the outcomes, making it easy to change the results.

To simplify it (for me), ask me what my favorite color is out of the selection that includes only the standard 6 colors in the rainbow, my answer would be green, ask me without the limit of the 6 colors and my answer would probably be burgundy. Although red or purple are closer in hue to burgundy, it was not an option, and since green is also a favorite color, it wins over two almosts, even though you hardly ever see me wear green. OK, so this is not a political example, but it is meant to illustrate that being given limited choices that do not include the preferred choice does not give a very accurate picture of someone. That, and I am a visual person.

The other thing I found interesting is that in the example, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama are all in the same general area as where it put me.