Not necessarily. What a relief. But there is no comparable academic industry devoted to studying the psychological underpinnings of liberalism. Liberals, you see, embrace liberalism for an obvious and uncomplicated reason -- liberalism is self-evidently true. But conservatives embrace conservatism for reasons that must be excavated from their inner turmoils, many of them pitiable or disreputable.

The professors' paper is adorned with this epigraph:

``Conservatism is a demanding mistress and is giving me a migraine.'' -- George F. Will

A ``mistress'' who is ``demanding''? Freud, call your office. The epigraph is from ``Bunts,'' a book of baseball essays, from an essay concerning what conservatives should think about the designated hitter. Will probably thought he was being lighthearted. Silly him. Actually, he was struggling with fear of ambiguity and the need for cognitive closure.

Conservatives, in the crippling grip of motivated social cognition, think they oppose the DH because it makes the game less interesting by reducing managers' strategic choices. But they really oppose that innovation because mental rigidity makes them phobic about change and intolerant of the ambiguous status of the DH. And because Mussolini would have opposed the DH.