So In Love–Jill Scott ft. Anthony Hamilton

Yes! Since the passing of Jack Layton, my mind has been on politics and political philosophy a lot and less on health and science. But I found something that allows me to tie the two together (kinda).

When I talk to people about politics they all seem to be in the middle or slightly on the left in the political spectrum. I study and work in academia so obviously I don’t meet many (any?) conservatives but there don’t seem to be many people that vocalize sympathy for the NDP despite the fact that they were the most popular party in this province last election. I began getting the feeling many people are uncomfortable being at an end of the political spectrum which then led me to wonder how many people vote for a centrist party (i.e. Liberals) because they believe in centrist policies and how many people vote for a centrist party just because they aren’t on an endpoint of the Canadian political spectrum? Of course, both reasons probably play a role as do many other things such as the charisma of the party leaders. But how many Canadians are just middle-of-the-roaders doing what Canadians do best: just trying to please everyone?

Before anyone feels the need to tell me Canada’s two biggest parties currently are on the extremes of the spectrum so my theory sort of falls apart, for a long time the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives ruled the political landscape from the middle. And like I said, there are other factors in play.

Turns out this phenomenon has been studied. Well, not really in politics but simply selecting one object from a lineup of five:

 The location of an item influences a person’s preference for that item, but it is unclear whether there is a preference for items located on the right or in the centre. In replication of the centre-stage effect, it was found that when participants were presented with a line of five pictures, they preferred pictures in the centre rather than at either end. This applies when the line of pictures was arranged horizontally or vertically and when participants selected from five pairs of identical socks arranged vertically.

I remember at some point reading that this same principle applies to prices of wine bottles where people’s desire to choose a price in the middle of  a range overrides their judgment of the value of a bottle of wine (I can’t find the reference!). For some reason people have an aversion to the ends of a spectrum, even when that spectrum is identical socks!

Which makes me wonder what would happen if Canada had an additional, small extreme right wing party, would that actually help the Conservative party (gasp!) by moving them away from the end of the spectrum. Same can be said of the NDP. But, then again, don’t we just pick our leaders by height anyway?