There’s an interesting little skirmish between Megan McArdle at Bloomberg and Katy Waldman at Slate about political ideology and psychology.

The subtitle of Waldman’s article is “Conservative beliefs make a lot more sense when you’re not paying attention.” Catnip for some, poison stew for others.

Waldman points to a study that found that when people don’t want to think too hard, like when they’re drunk, they tend to make more conservative statements.

In a study by Scott Eidelman, Christian Crandall, and others, volunteers were placed in situations that, by forcing them to multitask or to answer questions under time pressure, required them to fall back on intellectual shortcuts. They were then polled about issues such as free trade, private property, and social welfare. Time after time, participants were more likely to espouse conservative ideals when they turned off their deliberative mental circuits. In the most wondrous setup, the researchers measured the political leanings of a group of bar patrons against their blood alcohol levels, predicting that as the beer flowed, so too would the Republican talking points. They were correct, it turns out. Drunkenness is a tax on cognitive capacity; when we’re taxed too much, we really do veer right.

So, McArdle mocks this paper rather nicely,

They stood outside a New England bar, grabbed patrons and asked them to complete a 10-question political survey of rather elderly vintage. (Sample questions: “Production and trade should be free of government interference” and “Ultimately, private property should be abolished”). Then they asked them to blow into a Breathalyzer so that they could measure their blood-alcohol levels. The problems with this should be obvious: How did these people answer before they started drinking? We have no idea! Moreover, here is a word that doesn’t appear anywhere in their analysis: “inhibition.” Alcohol lowers social inhibition. If you’re in an area where conservatism is relatively frowned upon — like, oh, say, I dunno, New England — drinking might make you more willing to give honest answers. Or it might make you more willing to mess with the researchers by giving wrong answers. Or this study might be the next best thing to completely useless.

How did this paper get through the review process?