> -----Original Message----- > From: frank theriault [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > On 2/15/06, Bob W <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > How does one measure zeal? > > With a zeal-o-meter. > I may have thought up a way to do it. What we need to do is find everybody who identifies themselves as far left or Christian Right, plus a control group of sensible middle-of-the-roaders such as myself. We give each of them a heart rate monitor. Instruct them on its use, and get them to measure their resting heart rate over a certain period of time, and their daily average over a similar period. Now, we put each of them into a room which contains a screen. There is nothing behind the screen other than an Eliza-like computer program, but we tell our zealous guinea pigs that there is a potential convert there, and ask them to proselytise for a certain time (the same time for each zealot, of course). The computer is programmed to respond in an encouraging, almost-convinced way throughout. We take a pre-proselytisation heart rate measurement, and a post-proselytisation measurement. The difference between these means we can identify the most zealous individuals, as well as calculate averages, means and standard deviations to show us which group is the most zealous. Of course, most of the standard deviations will belong to the left. Right-wingers and religious people rather surprisingly tend to have significantly non-standard deviations. The average is important because, of course, one group may be significantly smaller than the other, and contain people whose ZQ (zealotry quotient) is higher than the other group. But the size of the other population could make them more zealous in absolute terms. However, I would imagine the lefties to be a smaller and considerably less zealous on average than the Christian Rightists, if only because they smoke so much grass and spend much more time asleep. Cheers, Bob
