Researchers have long wondered if some people can't help but be an extreme left-winger or right-winger, based on innate biology. To an extent, studies of the brains of self-identified liberals and conservatives have yielded some consistent trends, Schreiber said.
Two of these trends are that liberals tend to have more activity in parts of the brain known as the insula and anterior cingulate cortex. Among other functions, the two regions overlap to an extent by dealing with cognitive conflict, in the insula's case, while the anterior cingulate cortex helps in processing conflicting information.
Conservatives, on the other hand, have demonstrated more activity in the amygdala, known as the brain's "fear center." "If you see a snake or a picture of a snake, the amygdala will light up — it's a threat detector," said Iacoboni.
A study of British subjects earlier this year supported these past imaging studies with measurements of brain structure. The study showed that on average the amygdala is bigger in conservatives, likely indicating greater use of it in neurological processing. In contrast, liberals often possessed larger anterior cingulate cortexes.
Altogether, these findings suggest liberals can more easily tolerate uncertainty, which might be reflected in their shades-of-gray policy positions. In the U.S., those typically include being pro-choice and lenient on illegal immigration.
Conservatives, meanwhile, have a more binary view of threats versus non-threats. Again, such a predisposition could be extended to policy positions, such as being pro-life and stricter on the immigration issue.
So Liberals make their political choices based on an examination of the evidence and the weighing of options, while Conservatives make their decisions based on fear.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Sounds about right. Nice to see that science backs up what we see in the behavior of people.
ReplyDeleteIt may make sense to you but it doesn't stop it being highly flawed science, i.e. bullshit.
ReplyDeleteThe actor, Colin Firth, was involved in a similar study. I'll have to read the article and see if it is the same researchers and findings. I'll have to take a look after work.
ReplyDeletehttp://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/political-views-tied-brain-structure/story?id=13317961
Out of everyone I've ever known and met, I've determined that, generally speaking, the more "wild" you are in adolescence, the more conservative you are in thinking later in life.
ReplyDeleteMakes perfect sense to me. Conservatism is for pragmatists. Liberalism is for idealists.
Wow, sure puts Fox News and their audience in perspective.... my son asked me once why Fox always looks so "scary" all the time (referring to the flashing NEWS ALERT that they seem to favor for everything) when it's just "stuff" that they are reporting on. Mind you, this is coming from an 8 year old being forced to watch Fox in the doctor's office waiting room - we live in a very conservative small town, so it's hard to avoid Fox or talk radio when out in public
ReplyDeletePlease know that thinks tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Alec, and yes, Focus on The Family are very aware of these findings. In fact, stirring up the fear in the collective amygdala is their number one goal. It is precisely how they get the right to vote against their own interests, or vote en masse against the rights of others. Think about "mushroom cloud" imagery when selling the war, "destroying the sanctity of marriage" in reaction to gay rights, "government-run healthcare" and "socialism" during health care reform debates. Spin doctors Frank Luntz and Karl Rove are experts at polling the phraseology and fine-tuning it to get just the right amount amygdala lighting up in the conservative brain.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone experiences fear in the amygdala, it produces the "fight or flight" reaction. These think tanks always attach patriotism in a hard way to their message, thus cutting of the "flight" option, and leaving only "fight" for the conservative mind. Straight defense mode, take no prisoners, never mind what the truth is.
Fox News and right wing radio are huge fans of the conservative amygdala, the fear factor. No wonder Sarah Barracuda was such a useful tool in her day.
Very interesting...it seems to me conservatives are motivated by fear while liberals are motivated by hope.
ReplyDeleteFear of what? According to Corey Robinson, fear of loss of power. The apparent motivation for TeaBaggers to ally themselves with the very forces that are exploiting them - the Republican Party, insurance and pharmaceutical corporations, Wall Street, outsourcing manufacturers, Fox News, religions - is that of the weak allying themselves with perceived sources of power. If these powers are attacked, the weak go batshit in fear.
ReplyDeleteConservatives these days are less educated. They fear education.
ReplyDeleteI read that British study a while back. Stands to reason - there's got to be an underlying reason for the collective dysfunction of conservatism.
ReplyDeleteWell, peeps, I've got to tell you about the "rule that could not be broken" that my Mom and Dad had for us( there are 9 of us siblings) during those teen dating yrs....NO DATING REPUBLICANS!
ReplyDeleteMy very progressive, very politically active parents always told us that "republicans don't think the same" and now there is scientific evidence to back it up.
BTW all 9 of us are in, or had long term happy marriages ( my one BIL died in a tragic accident) and raised children that, using a my Mom's saying, are good citizens.
To this day, I thank my Dad quite often :)
Little Rabbit
To Ailsa 4:19 AM
ReplyDeleteThe science on this subject is definitely not bs! In fact, as other comments attest to here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/political-views-tied-brain-structure/story?id=13317961
and many articles in the news tell, is that the brain shows how we react to fear. The right wing think tanks are VERY aware of what the science proves and they use it.
Your ignorant comment shows you are one of their targets and your brain is fearful. You're not evolving or progressing, you're just regressing.
Change what you read & listen to and maybe you too can WAKE UP!
But is it inherent in the brain, or could the amount of space taken up by the amygdala and/or the cingulate whatamacallit be influenced by how the person intends to use their brain? In other words, could the person choose to use his higher functioning brain more and thus increase that part's area, or is his inability to use higher regions dependent on it's smaller size?
ReplyDeleteSee, to me, this study still doesn't show that inability to use other than the reptilian brain to make decisions (ha ha--the Republican/conservative people) is inherent, rather than just a matter of not choosing to use the intellectual portion of the brain more.
OTOH, just to be on the safe side, perhaps I'll follow Little Rabbit's family tradition of not allowing my children to date any Republicans!
What is always interesting to me is that the people who support war, the death penalty, bigger government,torture of others, and say they live by the Bible and the Constitution, are just the opposite. Yet they are called Christians and 'conservative.' Those of us who are pacifists, vote down the death penalty, were against torture and called Bush on it (and were called traitors!) are for helping the poor, educating everyone, and keeping everyone healthy and with a roof over their heads (all biblical mandates) are called liberal. Bassackwards if you ask me.
ReplyDeleteFear as a conservative motivator makes sense because it's not fact based reasoning. Fox news's whole philosophy is fear driven.
ReplyDeleteAnd fwiw. "Conservative think tanks" is an oxymoron.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=political-science-skeptic
ReplyDeleteThis is very illuminating.
The thinking of conservatives is also a strong interest of John Dean, frmr White House Legal Counsel to Nixon. After writing "Conservatives Without Conscience," Dean did a three-part follow-up in his blog at Findlaw.
ReplyDeleteHow Conservatives Think (Or Fail To Do So)
[...]"Conservatives once looked to the past for what it could teach about the present and the future. Early conservatives were traditionalists or libertarians, or a bit of both. Today, however, there are religious conservatives, economic conservatives, social conservatives, cultural conservatives, neoconservatives, traditional conservatives, and a number of other factions.
"Within these factions, there is a good amount of inconsistency and variety, but the movement has long been held together through the power of negative thinking. The glue of the movement is in its perceived enemies. Conservatives once found a common concern with respect to their excessive concern about communism (not that liberals and progressive were not concerned as well, but they were neither paranoid nor willing to mount witch hunts). When communism was no longer a threat, the dysfunctional conservative movement rallied around its members' common opposition to anything they perceived as liberal. (This was, in effect, any point of view that differed from their own, whether it was liberal or not.)
"To understanding conservatives thinking, it is important to examine not merely what conservatives believe, but also why they believe it. I found the answers to these two key questions in the remarkable body of empirical research work, almost a half-century in the making, undertaken by political and social psychologists who study authoritarian personalities."
Link to part one:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070905.html
I think the most accessible source of good information on this is still the study done in Alberta.
ReplyDeletehttp://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Very well worth reading.
Hey Ailsa@4:19.... afraid of something?
ReplyDelete4:59, Sorry, what you describe is not science, but anecdotal evidence, which is really not evidence at all.
ReplyDeleteThis is so interesting. It shows why we have such difficulty understanding others. David Horowitz is used as an example of a very liberal person who became conservative. When you look at his background, his parents we dyed in the wool Communists and probably were actually extremely conservative in that they didn't question conflicts.
ReplyDeleteThis also gives us understanding of the schism in Christianity. I would suspect that most of the religious right are fearful of hell. The more liberal Christians see death as more of a transition into something new.
there was also a very long-term study done on children that spanned quite a number of years...
ReplyDeletethey found that the children most easily upset and cried the most in daycare and required the most attention at early ages tended to end up being more 'conservative' in their beliefs/voting while the children that cried less and required little attention grew up to be liberal in their beliefs.
that does not surprise me either. It must be in the brain because so many times when i hear some conservative jerkoff spewing their stupidity all I can think is -- how can someone think or rationalize something in that manner?
To Jean:
ReplyDeleteYou are so right. I don't read the sort of sources you provide. I read the actual research papers. I realize it's not always easy for people who are not attached to a university to access original work.
I have an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in science and philosophy. My own area is embodied cognition, which, I admit cannot easily be married to an understanding from an evolutionary psychology perspective. Bodied cognition models the brain as a product of dynamic, self-organizing interactions among processes at different time-scales, that is evolutionary, developmental,in real time, evolutionary psychologists assume the existence of underlying brain structures, shaped by natural selection and encoded in genetic structures.
I do read EP research and pay attention to these studies that are well designed. I fight my inclination to feel This is recycled sociobiology from the 60s and 70s with FMRI added. Bad designed studies with unwarranted conclusions are bullshit in any area.
A resonable primer in EP can be found here - http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
I would recommend Andy Clark's "Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again".
If you would like to learn more
I apologize for errors in my post. I pressed publish before preview. :)
ReplyDeleteHey Molly! Yes, you make a lot of sense.