# Are You Lying about Liking Jazz? By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-02-18 I heard recently about a study where the researchers were interested in how long it took people to love or hate a song. The most interesting part of the study was how people responded to jazz. In particular, people who claimed to be liberal reported liking jazz a lot more than their brain scans would indicate while they were listening to jazz. If the study results are valid, several interesting hypotheses emerge. First, people believe that to be liberal means that one should like jazz. I'm sure entire lives could be spent studying why this might be the case, but I suspect public radio playing a lot of jazz has something to do with it. However, one could argue that the unpredictability, improv, and "feeling the music" that comes with the perception of "enjoying" jazz highlight core principles of what our culture believes to be liberal. So, it makes sense that jazz is a genre of choice for liberals. If we assume to be liberal is to, at least, also like jazz, the second hypothesis is that not nearly as many people are liberal as they put on. They clearly don't like jazz as much as they profess. Thus, it is better to act and claim to be liberal than to act and claim to be conservative in American society. Interestingly, culture is pushing us in this direction, yet many of our deepest internal beliefs prevent us from fully embracing it. Instead, we pretend to be more liberal and like jazz more than we do. No wonder public opinion surveys show liberal leanings while private voting behavior shows much more conservatism than expected. Culture, adult development, and progress have complex dynamics that we are still attempting to understand. So, perhaps the key question is whether the people who claimed to be liberal know how much they don't like jazz (again, assuming to be liberal is to like jazz). Are we collectively self-aware of how our feelings impede us from being the person we believe we want to be? Are you lying to yourself, or are you a weird liberal who just doesn't dig jazz? #### Related Items [[Jazz]] [[Liberal]] [[Conservative]] [[Politics]] [[Progress]] [[Mindfulness]] [[Culture]]