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Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, and Sensation-Seekers

In today's increasingly polluted and politicized atmosphere, one is often pressured, either forcibly or subtly, to identify his personal location, either publicly or privately, on a conservative-liberal political continuum (with radical extensions on either end). Some persons, particularly those toward the ends of this continuum, exhibit a strong need to proclaim their identificacjon with great fervor and display, while those in the middle are understandably less ardent about the whole business. This pilot work was done to check the "sensation-seeking" correlates, or the need for stimulus variation or novelty, of these political identifications. A total of 119 university students (40 men, 79 women; mostly juniors and seniors) were asked to locate themselves on a five-point conservative-liberal political continuum (with extensions for radicalism on both ends). In addition, each person filled our three questionnaires which purport to measure the need for sensation-seeking or stimulus change (sample item: "An element of risk adds to my enjoyment of an activity or event.") : The Change Seeker Index (CSI; 1), the Stimulus-variation Seeking Scale (SVSS; 2), and the sensation-seeking Scale (SSS; 3). The political ideology self-racings were scored on a five-point scale, with 1 assigned to radicals at the conservative end and 5 assigned to radicals at the opposite end. The Pearsonian correlations among these self-ratings and the various measures of sensation-seeking were: SVSS. .17; SSS, .38; CSI, .41. There was a negative but nonsignificant r of -.14, with birth order, and males tended to be slightly more "leftish than females (mean self-rating for males, 3.55; females, 3.10). The over-all mean political ideology rating for this group of university students was 3.24 (SD = 1.05). These data suggest that persons who identify toward the liberal-left of the political continuum may be desirous of an environment filled with novelty and change (as measured by the SSS or the CSI). REFERENCES