Facebook’s smallest political quiz

science Thursday, March 25, 2010. Post by David Bradley

I usually don’t bother with Facebook quizzes and applications, in particular I don’t want to know whether you woke up with a cow’s head in your bed because of an argument over organic fertilizer with the local mobsters.

But today I took the World’s smallest political quiz, you might also say it is the world’s most superficial political quiz, but it tells me that I am smack, bang in the middle of the liberal quarter. How the questions mesh with political views in the context of the British democracy and voting system rather than that of the USA I don’t know. I’d say that it’s probably correct in its assumptions in a general sense and who wouldn’t want to be described as taking the middle ground as follows:

Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded “safety net” to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

I cleared my results and took the quiz a second time inserting contrary views to see what the quiz would make of them. Someone with those contrary views would, it seems, be a conservative: “Conservatives tend to favor economic freedom, but frequently support laws to restrict personal behavior that violates “traditional values.” They oppose excessive government control of business, while endorsing government action to defend morality and the traditional family structure. Conservatives usually support a strong military, oppose bureaucracy and high taxes, favor a free-market economy, and endorse strong law enforcement.”

I didn’t try again to see if I could spoof being a statist, centrist, or libertarian, but the simple quiz does seem to encapsulate the values of the two political leanings I did test.

Jim Turner

March 27th, 2010 at 11:38 pm

The worlds smallest political quiz has been out for years. David Nolan worked on it back in the seventies and there are a number of variations out there
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart

To me it shows the problem of trying to reduce politics to a single dimension of left vs right or red vs blue. There is a whole political spectrum out there.

David Bradley

March 28th, 2010 at 7:07 pm

I think this version of the quiz addresses that issue very well by not simply categorising you as being of one political persuasion or the other but rather positioning you somewhere in the matrix rather than say blue or red.

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