Liberals and Conservatives: Open or Conscientious

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Political/social psychologists have found that conservatives tend to be more conscientious than liberals, but liberals tend to be more open to experience. That is, conservatives tend to have a higher drive to order, structure, consistency, and duty in their lives while liberals tend to prefer matters of the intellect, art, thinking, meaning, interesting happenings, diversity and novelty, etc. How does this jive with your experience?

Sounds right. No wonder we can't stand each other.

"higher drive to order, structure, consistency, and duty"

Yep.

Again that word / meaning gulf.

Not even touching the POLITICAL psychologists.

If you go by the base meaning of the words, this could make sense if we know about the sampling and the methods of data collection.

But many who style themselves "Liberal" or "Conservative" are about as liberal [lower case, now] or conservative as some who style themselves "Christians" are imitators of Christ.

Well, if you read the linked study, self-identified conservatives kept their bedrooms and offices neat and tidy; liberals had more books, art, and things relating to foreign cultures. One thing that definitely stood out about conservatives I remember meeting in college is that their dorm rooms were always extremely neat and organized. I myself am no slob, but they stood out as being anal about it. I specifically picked the dorm that had more foreign-exchange students because that interested me.

This link breaks it down even further, showing correlations on social and economic axes.

Conseratives tend to be a bit more peaceful than liberals.
Example: Tea Party rallies so far have been peaceful; while when liberals hold rallies for any reason, they like to riot.

Makes sense. Although I'm very disorganized (my room is a disaster and my binder is full of loose papers), I value self-control and discipline very highly. I know the studies pertain to liberal and conservative, but I'm a right libertarian so it also pertains to the political spectrum in general.

I tend to lean libetarian myself. However, I lean more to the right.

Libertarians would be an odd combination--very uptight, anal and self-disciplined promiscuous pot-smokers.

My room is always a mess, I have more books than my three book cases can hold, I have read over a thousand novels in the past decade, I write novels and essays, love classical music and live and breathe every experience that comes my way, I'm shamelessly in love with a feminist, and I can't think of any ideal higher than living by my writing.

Yep. As you may have guessed, I'm a conservative. I believe in God, too. Wow. What accuracy.

That's funny, I also happen to smoke weed. I'm just a tight ass about self-control and discipline, but open minded about everything else. I'm very open to experience, just not open to recklessness or sloppiness.

@ PJW: In the pdf it says these differences are small or moderate in magnitude:

You're a closet Liberal.

I forgot to mention that.

And?

Uh my room is always a mess, and I'm an avid reader also. Furthermore I'm a Conservative like PJW, something tells me the survey isn't entirely accurate.

The idea that more people that are professors being liberal could be argued as being brainwashing because a lot of professors try to force their political views on people depending on what school you go to.