Red Brains vs. Blue Brains? 1665
eLoco writes "From the NYTimes (reg. req.): The Political Brain -- "Why do Republicans and Democrats differ so emphatically? Perhaps it's all in the head." Researchers from UCLA have seem to have found that liberals have, on average, a more active amygdala than conservatives. According to the article, studies of stroke victims "have persuasively shown that the amygdala plays a key role in the creation of emotions like fear or empathy." So is this scientific "proof" that liberals tend to be more compassionate but also more cowardly? [DISCLAIMER: this is not a troll; I am a liberal]. Regardless, this seems to have implications for more than just politics. Favorite quote: "Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function.""
mod insightful, not funny (Score:0, Informative)
Our "Understanding" of the Brain... (Score:4, Informative)
To pass this study off as if it can suggest conclusions, of any kind, about the way one kind of party member thinks versus another is exactly the kind of grandstanding, irresponsible and basically incoherent brain science I am sadly used to hearing about.
We don't really understand the role of the amygdala in our consciousness - in fact, we don't understand consciousness even slightly. Even if we don't hear an apologetic revolution in a year or two stemming from one of the many competing theories about other parts of our brain anatomy that may be equally important to our "limbic system," the methodology of the study itself may easily be flawed, if for instance those operating the survey (interviewing and handlnig subjects) or the survey materials (questionaries, etc) caused subjects from one party to feel differently than the other during examinations...
Were it not for the matte gloss of UCLA science, this article would be a much more obvious fit in the New York Post or the National Enquirer than the New York Times.
Re:All the studies show (Score:2, Informative)
If it's the fucking miracle you folks think it is, then there should be plenty of private research by those who seek to profit from it.
Cognitive Science on Conservative/Liberal (Score:1, Informative)
Lakoff builds coherent metaphor models that support conservative and liberal worldviews. If you are interested in going beyond flamebait and ridiculous attacks (on both sides) this is an excellent book.
Correlation but not causation... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All the studies show (Score:2, Informative)
The (Political) Science of Stem Cells [opinionjournal.com].
Re:This explains why liberals play emotions like f (Score:3, Informative)
-Ab
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:All the studies show (Score:2, Informative)
What they all talk about is a change for the current generation to a way of saving for retirement that could have many advantages over the current system. No one would be denied their social security benefits - it's just another myth some people would like you to believe.
not junk science, but junk presentation (Score:2, Informative)
Gandhi (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I was conservative, and am now a radical libera (Score:1, Informative)
--trb
A lot flawed here (Score:3, Informative)
1) The conservative vs. liberal distinction is not a universal phenomenon. There are, in fact, mostly coalition governments throughought the world (not the two-party system we have here) with plenty of shades of policy difference between them. Thus, politics do not spontaneously organize around some neural divide among people.
2) The fact that amygdalar activation showed the most significant neural distinction betwen conservative and liberals in the scanner does not necessarily indicate that the neural difference is causal, compelling, or anywhere near the most determinating in dividing liberals from conservatives. It only means that were more amygdalar activation, on average, than might be predicted by chance, for democrats. One then wants to ask what items were responsible for this activation, and were the items not images that are most provocative for democrats a priori? That is to say, it would not be surprising to find greater amygdalar ("emotional") response in democrats to say, images of homeless people NOT because they are more "compassionate" people, but because they have been sensitized to these images by their defined party affiliation. Learned salience.
3) Compassion vs. pragmaticism does not neatly carve up even the American political space. Conservatives, traditionally, are pro-death penalty (arguably pragmatic), but are also pro-life (arguably compassionate). Liberals traditionally hold the complementary positions. Of course, even this analysis is simplisitic as conservatives can make arguments for the compassion of the death penalty (justice for the victims), and liberals can make arguments for the compassion of abortion choice (self-determination of the mother).
4) While the article wants to point to some neural division among as the explanation for there being strong cross-class bridging in both parties (i.e. limousine liberals and rural democrats; corporate conservatives and small-town conservatives), the truth is one can offer far more parsimonious accounts. Each class draws its affiliation with a party based on certain aspects that appeal to it uniquely. Corporate conservatives enjoy the fiscal laissez faire of conservative politics, while small-town conservatives value conservative social morals. Academics and aristocrats who feel less tied to tradition identify with progressive democratic social policy, while rural Democrats value the more hands-on fiscal marshalling of liberal politics.
What is far more interesting to me, as a psychologist, is not the neural underpinnings that differentiate the parties (I doubt there are strong ones), but rather the blind polarization that comes with party identity. The capacity for the human brain the rationalize is astounding. It boggles my mind that party ideologues will rationalize all actions of their politicians, but demonize all actions of the opposition, when clearly they would have very different opinions of the actions per se if they were outside a party context. What is fascinating is that this polarization is more than just sophistry: people actually believe that their polarized worldview is correct, and are convinced of their candidates' rectitude. Now THAT plastic capacity of the mind is fascinating and scary.
Re:I was conservative, and am now a radical libera (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Jesus H Christ (Score:1, Informative)
As it is, with a simple majority of FIVE, the United States Supreme Court can invent rights that the entire electorate isn't prepared, and has never been called on, to secure. The states are doing just fine defining marriage on their own (something like 41 and counting, with five having their own constitutional amendments), but all it takes is for the USSC to decide that sexual orientation fits into the protected class "sex." (Loving v. Virginia already established that marriage is a matter of equal protection.) Then the entire country, regardless of existing law (including the DoMA), is forced to recognize unions that most of them don't approve of.
Shouldn't this be something for the people to decide?
The idea that the judiciary has so much power is repugnant to a lot of people. (Except the clueless ones, who don't know tyranny when they see it.) The problem lies with politicians in both major parties. They haven't been able to get some of their party platform's pet legislation passed, so they've let the judiciary get powerful, hoping to be able to put their "own" judges in. Judicial appointments should never be as hotly contested as they are.
Re:The bravery of liberals (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The bravery of liberals (Score:3, Informative)
Limited government, self rule, states rights...
They mostly wanted a limited government, which neither major party wants, despite what some republicans might say. I think they'd be turning over in their graves if they knew how we've f'ked up this country.
Re:All the studies show (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, there's plenty of federal funding for research that uses adult stem cells. There's even funding for research that uses several preexisting lines of embryonic stem cells; the law only prohibits federal funding of research involving new lines of embryonic stem cells.
Who was the president who signed the bill that provides this funding? George W. Bush.
While adult stem cells hold promise for such things as generation of transplantable organs and tissues that won't be rejected (in a sense, you would become your own donor), the outlook for embryonic stem-cell research has been nowhere near as promising. Nasty cancers known as teratomas have often formed where embryonic stem cells are injected...in one experiment involving rats [bbc.co.uk], they formed in one out of five test subjects.
That said, there's no law that prohibits use of private funding toward any sort of stem-cell research, whether using adult or embryonic stem cells from either preexisting or new cell lines. Some people, unfortunately, have found it easier to engage in demagoguery and impute malicious intent to those with whom they disagree than to follow a more rational course. Since it's easy for the nightly news to get soundbites from them, they're paid far more attention than they deserve, and before long, their distortions of the true state of affairs get accepted as truth.
Re:"Liberal" talk in USA is Silly (Score:2, Informative)
They are not illegal by Geneva or any international body's standards. Are they getting the rights given by the US Constitution? No. But those are for American citizens not held as war prisoners.
Come on. You may think that the Patriot act gives to many powers to the government, and thats fine. But "secret police powers"?? And "vast expansion" of them? Thats a little to sensationalistic.
Yes, that may be true, but are you worried that the US is going to take over your country? We didn't even take Iraq as our own. I think that its a good thing that countries like US, England, France, Germany, Japan, etc maintain a strong military to fight against any dictators that try to amass armies to get rid of democracies. Chosen in a hail of controversy? I don't know what you mean exactly, but I guess you are referring to Gore's recount request. The votes got recounted, and Bush still won.
I don't understand the hate that is beginning to be perpetuated against the US. The US has made some mistakes (like the intellegence about Iraq), and so we jumped the gun with Iraq. But why would that cause Europe to HATE us? If you look at it, we should NEVER have gone in there, but it is not the worst thing in the world. Saddam is gone, and now the Iraqis have freedom (at least relatively). And they are even kicking ass in soccer! (interesting and funny sidenote).
I really think that it is important that we do not divide ourselves over what really amounts to politics.
You disagree with the way the US runs it domestic and foriegn policy: ok, good.
You think that the US would be best run by someone like maybe Nader: ok, thats interesting.
But you hate the US and arrogant Bush loving Americans: not cool.
Lets put thing in perspective before really harboring hate towards each other.
Re:Do you believe in God? (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't as simple as believing in God or not, as many democrats are religious (opposed to what you might hear on TV).
That's not true (Score:2, Informative)
That's because the European Socialist parties are so FAR left, that they're ready to fall off the globe.
This election is a testament to the fact that their are real, far-ranging differences between the Republicans and Democrats. George Wallace was famous for saying that there's not "a dime's worth of difference between the two parties". That's just not true anymore. Both parties have moved much farther along their ideological sides in the past two decades. The GOP is much more right wing, and the Democrats are much more left wing. The only difference between the American Democrats and the European Socialists is that the Dems don't have a plank in the party platform calling for public ownership of production. There's no current call for single-payer health care in the Democratic platform, but it HAS been tried before, and sooner or later, will re-appear in the platform as soon as the party thinks that it's feasable to do so.
Re:I was conservative, and am now a radical libera (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about this...if this were the case, the media would be agreeing with him and biased against John Kerry. That hasn't been the case. Bush has been routed by nearly every media outlet.
Read "Bias" by Bernie Goldberg...while it tends to read like a 150 page rant against Dan "The Dan" Rather, he has a number of people in the news business on record, and through personal testimony, submitting that it's nearly a given that the media is biased towards the left. I'm not talking about ads on Nightline saying "Bush is a Moron", I'm talking about subtle spin being placed on the issue by news reporters...not editorialists (read: Dan Rather, NOT O'Reilly). Some of his citations even wonder why he would bother to make that statement, like it's an unspoken truth about the business. It's a decent read, nothing that's going to lite a fire under you, but interesting.
--trb
Re:Nature vs. Nurture relate to Free Will (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Jesus H Christ (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Do you believe in God? (Score:3, Informative)
Heh, that reminds me... among the marchers at the big (1-2 million strong) anti-war rally in London's Hyde Park, there were any number of Christian and Muslim banners, a fair few Jewish banners... and one lonely soul in a pentagram t-shirt with the banner "Satanists Against The War".
Implications for the relative ethical level of the US right are left as an exercise for the reader.
Re:All the studies show (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:4, Informative)
The UN report provides only negative evidence of the origin of the mustard gas sample. The absence in the sample analysed in Sweden and Switzerland of polysulphides and of more than a trace of sulphur indicates that it is not of past US-government manufacture, for all US mustard was made by the Levinstein process from ethylene and mixed sulphur chlorides. That process is also said to have been the one used by the USSR. From similar reasoning, British-made mustard, too, can probably be ruled out, even though substantial stocks were once held at British depots in the Middle East. For more positive evidence other sources of information must be used. Over the years since the mid-1960s quite a lot of information has been published purporting to describe Iraqi chemical weapons, but much of it is contradictory and all of it is of a reliability which SIPRI is in no position to judge. A major caveat must be entered: chemical warfare is such an emotive subject that it lends itself very readily to campaigns of disinformation and black propaganda, campaigns which the politics both of the Gulf War and of the current chemical-weapons negotiations have unquestionably stimulated to no small degree.
Re:Cosby (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Jesus H Christ (Score:1, Informative)
Sure, just like they picked the President with a simple majority of FIVE. I know you must be outraged over that.
Come off it. The gay marriage issue is not and has never been about judicial activism. It's about discrimination, just like the civil-rights era Supreme Court rulings, which were criticized in much the same way. The fact that Bush needs a wedge issue to keep voters from contemplating the war and/or the economy is icing on the cake.
Re:Do you believe in God? (Score:2, Informative)
The US evangelicals who advocate the supremacy of faith and dogma over acts of charity should perhaps more accurately be described as Paulists than Christians. Christ's viewpoints were a bit of an uncomfortable annoyance that Paul ignored where possible.
Check out this [atheistsforjesus.com] - it's not the irreverent joke you might imagine.
Re:Wow.... (Score:2, Informative)
Not everybody can afford to get a higher education, and not everybody is going to be in demand. It's silly to assume people are being lazy if they can't find work. It's even sillier to count on local charities and neighbors with big hearts to help them out. It is the responsibility of government to take care of those citizens who are shit out of luck, as no other organization is as capable of assisting everyone that needs it.
Re:Do you believe in God? (Score:2, Informative)
"Abortion is murder (simple biological fact, aborted human life == dead human)"
I think you missed a couple of steps there, since when does a dead human automatically == Murder?
Have you ever heard of 'Natural Causes' or perhaps 'Manslaughter' both examples of someone becoming a dead human where there was no murder (in the second case there was even someone else committing the act).
Your Gay Marriage comment:
Gay Marriage is as inevitable as the Women's rights movement and the end of slavery, you can struggle all you want but you are going to have to deal with that unless you want to be on the wrong side of history.
Muslim Terrorists:
Since when does 1000 ot of ~ 1 billion equal a large subset!?!?!
Secondly, and I want to make this very clear:
THEY ATTACKED THE UNITED STATES BECAUSE OF IT'S INFLUENCE IN THE HOLY LAND.
Yes, it has nothing to do with hating freedom. It was nothing to do with jealousy. They want the Middle East to be American-Free and Muslim and they will kill to get it. They couldn't give less of a sh*t about you eating burgers in a mall and hating gays, so go nuts!
People are not wired for RELIGION, they _may_ be wired to have a belief system. Further, Christianity is one of the LEAST benign religions because it has been perverted to be a tool forgive all sorts of atrocities. The crusades killed more Muslims than all acts of Muslim-based terror combined.
My advice for someone as angry and ignorant as you:
Read a biology ethics book, have a conversation with a Gay person, and watch bbc news for a couple months rather than FOX. It will clear your head of a lot of the junk you have floating up around there.
Re:Not true (Score:1, Informative)
Are you sure? I think the assumption that there is a lack of state backing is naive. Tribal politics are the norm in the ME, as are proxy armies--in other words, while there is a foreigner we hate the foreigner, when the foreigner is gone, we hate our cousins. To get rid of the foreigners, we use our militias. For fellow Ba'athists Syria to not grant passage to Iranian backed Hizbullah insurgents would seem to go against everything Assad and his father stood for, and in fact, the against the generally subversive nature of ME politics. So, yeah, it's more like Cambodia than North Vietnam. All that remains now is to find the evidence (real evidence, not phony Iraq war evidence) indicting Iran and Syria...
Are liberals more compassionate/cowardly? (Score:3, Informative)
Viet-Nam was started by Kennedy, and hugely expanded by Johnson. It was ended by Nixon.
Both A-Bombs were dropped by a Democrate.
The USA entered both World Wars under Democrates.
Various conservatives groups have been lavishly generous to various chartible causes. Conservatives just don't like the present welfare system.
Or, do conservatives like the welfare system? Social programs grew twice as much under the Regan administration, than the Carter administration.
Re:Florida Bright Futures (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What difference? (Score:2, Informative)
In the USA, the center of the political spectrum is a bit more averse to change than the rest of the world, and it always has been. Britain is similar in this regard, though they've moved a bit more than we have. In countries where the center has shifted significantly in one direction or another, communism(far left), fascism(far right), theocracy, socialism, or other such undesirable government has been the result, and the majority of Americans want no part in anything like that. Despite arguments between the left and the right, the center is usually where the correct course of action is, and that's where our leaders usually take us. And as I've said, that center doesn't move much.
From the American point of view, the rest of the world has been drifting leftward steadliy since World War II. Heavy socialist programs such as national health care and welfare (I believe you brits call it 'the dole') have become the norm in Europe and Canada due to weakness on the right and the need for social programs to rebuild from World War II. Here, those early leftist programs were resisted because we didn't need to rebuild as much as the rest of the world. We needed to demobilize and build up our Military-industrial infrastructure to combat the future war with the Soviets that never happend. As a result, where the rest of the world took a step left, we stepped right -- traditionally stronger than the left. The only way Kennedy got elected in the early 60's was because he was so rightward leaning in this regard. He ran on being tough on communism. That (and Richard J. Daley [wikipedia.org]) won him the election.
The most significant leftward movement in the US over the last century has, ironically, not been due to our legislative or executive branches of government, but due to our activist judiciary. Abortion rights, desegregation, women's rights, have all been leftward movements imposed on the US by the courts(not that this is a bad thing!).
Many view the problem here as where our lawmakers come from. Our senatorial elections have become a contest between millionaires to see who can buy themselves a seat. Our presidential elections have become less "who do we want to have the job," and more "I'm going to vote for the guy I dislike the least". The result is an elected official who noone really likes, and who does a pretty lousy job. Jimmy Carter was elected the same way that GWB was elected: because too many people disliked the alternative.
In response to your question, the Democratic party is the further left of the two. Some of their planks include abortion rights, healthcare reform, pro-labor legislation, larger government entitlements (the Republicans criticize them for "tax and spend" legislation), redistribution of wealth from the upper classes to the lower, greater attention to social issues, and opposing anything that comes from the Republicans. The Republican party is the further right of the two. Their planks include the rights of the unborn, lower taxes, degregulation of business and other pro-business legislation (including stricter copyright legislation), smaller government through shrinking social services, and opposing anything that comes from the Democrats.
The interesting thing today is that, because of the disaster that the Bush presidency has been, we're looking at a large-scale leftward movement of the country, similar to the rightward movement when Reagan replaced Carter. (But I must say that John Kerry is no Ronald Reagan. He's just not charismatic enough. He's not winning this election as much as Bush is losing it.) Though this leftward movement will happen, look for it to reverse in two years for the congressional elections, as it did after Clinton was elected. Conservatives will wake up and realize that they're conservatives again, because Bush will no longer be there to hate.
The reason that non-Americans see so little difference is that the one area where the American political parties have little disagreement in is foriegn policy. Whatever else happens in November, remember this: US foriegn policy will not change much, regardless of who is elected.
No published scientific evidence for this (Score:3, Informative)