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Is "Left" Vs. "Right" Hard-coded Into Your Brain?
New submitter kyjellyfish writes "Research published in the journal PLOS ONE, suggests that your parents 'Left
or 'Right' party affiliations are not the only factor at work shaping a person's political identity. Differences in opinion between 'Lefties' and 'Righties' may reflect specific physiological processes. In research performed over 10 years ago, brain scans showed that London cab drivers' gray matter grew larger to help them store a mental map of the city."
From the article: "Other scans have shown that brain regions associated with risk and uncertainty, such as the fear-processing amygdala, differ in structure in liberals and conservatives. And different architecture means different behavior. Liberals tend to seek out novelty and uncertainty, while conservatives exhibit strong changes in attitude to threatening situations. The former are more willing to accept risk, while the latter tends to have more intense physical reactions to threatening stimuli."
So what the article is saying is that conservatives are pussies. Gotchya.
No?
That the pussified liberals are afraid of stubbing their toes so they live in a perpetual state of fear that drives their desire to control others, while big brave conservative tough-guys are out protecting the world with hard-nosed risk taking and freedom-spreading.
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
Nope, your brain is just fucked up; "hard-core" leanings toward any political party these days is insane.
Kind of. Through the wonder of plasticity your brain can manage to reform a (partially) functioning consciousness, even in the face of catastrophic damage. Did you receive a blow to the head or experience a stroke?
Nope, your brain is just fucked up
I came here to say this, since I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative - neither party offers either of those...
"hard-core" leanings toward any political party these days is insane.
Then I lol'd.
Nope, you're just bipartisan.
So how does this work in a traditionally free country like America, where conservatives favor freedom of the individual, with its inherent risk that an individual might fail, while the liberals want the government to guarantee the health safety and happiness of every human being and remove all risk from life?
Perhaps it is explained that what the conservatives fear is not risk, but loss of control. American conservatives are afraid to place their fates into the hands of the elected experts on human happiness.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
In certian circumstances certian policies make sense like abortion rights, in other circumstances like the right to bear arms I value my freedom and my rights to carry a weapon at all times.
Its the American political scene that's screwed up, its designed to fight against ourselves and the people who are caught in the middle are those who haven't fully seen either sides options and been able to pick and choose from either side.
It has nothing to do with genetics and hard-coded wiring of our brains, I believe its our upbringing which exposes us to varying levels of either left or right policies and behavior that decides whether or not we will vote left or right.
I think it means that you really have no opinions of your own and just follow the crowd blindly.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The article actually specifically points out that the brain can develop in response to certain stimuli. So yeah.
I actually want to see how this would classify me given that while my reactions for friends / people in general are stronger than my family / country reactions, I'm incredibly risk averse on a personal level.
It's not hardwired: If it were, we'd be able to do these scans at birth or an early age and find similar patterns. But we don't. Which means the brain's structure changes in order to specialize in certain thought and behavior patterns. The fact that this applies to politics as well as, say, geospatial, tasks, should be absolutely no surprise.
It's disengenuous to suggest these things are hard-wired because they imply they cannot be changed. Except they can: I've known many people who, after experiencing a significant emotional event, altered their politics, religious affiliation, and even base personality traits. The human brain is exceptionally malleable. This study only offers a snapshot at a particular point in time and suggests that if certain structural properties are present, the thinking pattern is likely to be of a certain type. It does not say whether that structure was present before, after, or the extent to which it can be changed, and if so, how quickly.
It's like taking a photograph of a car driving down the road and assuming that it's on that road, and only that road, forever.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Your brain most likely reflects your views. Neuroplasticity and the such.
There is a whole bunch of evidence for Neuroplasticity (your brain rewiring itself due to input, behaviour changes and illness), so it is possible.
Nope. You probably just have a very strong need to identify with a group. When you decided the group you had identified with had disappointed you somehow (not hard with the current crop of Republicans if you haven't completely closed your mind to inconvenient facts) you switched to the only other available option. If you're not in the USA, well, the Repulicans aren't the only hypocritical right wing party that is fanning and exploiting fear, greed, and jealousy to gain power.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Now, pay attention. London cabbies are NOT born with expanded gray matter. They are "normal" people, become cabbies, get expanded gray matter.
Now, can your brain rewire itself?
Research suggests that yes, it can.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
Given how many times I've told people I was dating over the years "no, the other left!" or "no, the other right!" to avoid getting into crashes or whatever, I'm guessing neither is hard-coded in some people's brains.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Oh look, it's news reinforcing the false premise of the two party system.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Cowards are on the right. That is not news!
"Liberals" (in the modern US sense of progressives / left wing) are enormously fearful and risk averse: they want governmental protection against unemployment, against medical expenses, against global warming, against guns, and lots of other things. Granted, the nature of these fears are seemingly more rational and plausible than those of conservatives (who seem to fear anything from the wrath of God to being tempted into homosexuality by gay marriage), but they are still driven by fear.
The only group who isn't driven by fear is libertarians, people who actually have trust in their ability to make a living somehow and survive in an uncertain and changing world, independent of God or government help. Libertarians are often linked with "conservatives", but they are more accurately described as classical liberals.
The Divided Brain video.
Now, can your brain rewire itself? Research suggests that yes, it can.
Which is an incredibly dull and obvious conclusion. Of course it can: Otherwise we'd still think and act like infant children. All we've managed to do here is look closely enough at the brain that we can start to see landscape features and make inferences from that which are broadly true for others which have similar features. Which is no small achievement, but this is confirmatory research -- it tells us something we already knew, to a high degree of confidence.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
How far a step is this from 'discovering' that some political viewpoints mental disorders?
The doctor uploads that with a JTAG after birth...
Is there treatment for that? Or is the rubber room the only option?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
to point out the already-known fact that cowards are cowards.
The defining characteristic of conservatism is fear.
This space available.
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
It's more likely that your definition if conservative and liberal changed.
My people call themselves conservative or liberal, while meaning totally different things.
Infact, the original meaning isn't left right :
the normal opposite of "conservative" would be "progessive" ( sticking to what's known to work versus taking the risk of trying new things ).
the normal opposite of "liberal" , would be authoritarian ( liberalism favoring more freedom , whereas authoritarianism favoring less freedom ( more control by state ) ). Although there is also the distinction between liberal (state should ensure freedom ) and libertarian ( state should be minimized, thus providing more freedom)
Left : more personal freedom, less economic freedom.
Right : more economic freedom, less personal freedom.
For example, you could be a left-leaning conservative liberal, which would mean that you value freedom, with emphasis on personal freedom, but prefer to stick to tried and true policies for achieving this ( just an example, I'm not saying you are ) .
Slipping shoelaces ?
The fact that someone made a huge swing from Conservative to Liberal (even more hypocritical) means they've been high on weed!
I find the "left" and "right" people stupid and offensive to humanity. And these fruitpies love to think every person is either left or right. Is there an antidote other than murdering all these lefty and righty dittoheads. GAH
There are two kinds of people:
People with ambition who want to build their own empire and support themselves (conservatives)
Lazy people who want the collective to take care of everybody and make everybody the same (liberals)
Then there is one third class: politicians who do nothing but live off the labor of others claiming some omnipotence to tell everybody else what they should and should not do (scum of the earth - regardless of party)
I'll leave the compilation of counterexamples to you.
Neither "hard-core conservative" nor "hard-core liberal" refer to any political party. Ideologies perhaps. You could equate Tea-Partiers to the former and Occupiers to the latter, but neither group appears to have much faith in their "designated party" from the 2-party system we've got. Liberals complain that Obama is perpetuating and strengthening heavily criticized policies from GWB. Meanwhile, the conservatives have been throwing their stalwarts (Arlen Spector, John McCain, and now Chuck Hagel, et al) under the bus for not being suitably uncompromising about their core ideologies. And the GOP is torn apart as their try to pander to this group while distancing themselves from nutjobs such as Todd Akin.
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This study only discovers what liberal brains look like, not whether they are liberal because of their brain, or their brain developed in that fashion because they are liberal.
Worthless Science. Who paid for this worthless study?
Such meaningless labels. Let me give two counter-examples regarding the alleged "left seek novelty"/"right fear change" divide:
- for reasons I've never entirely understood, environmentalism is stereotypically "leftie", and yet a large part of environmentalism is fear of change to the environment: be it deforestation, CO2 emmission, whatever. Founded or not, at root it's mostly down to an "intense physical reaction to threatening stimuli" (eg fear of what changes pumping more and more CO2 will cause).
- extreme capitalism... you know, "right wing" stuff... is all about the mantra "change (or progress/growth) is good". If you fear change then your hardly going to start dropping trade barriers and advocating for a free market that practically guarantees change and relies on novelty to remain strong.
Another batch of liberals trying to justify their existence. Heard it before.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Please ignore this story.
PLoS ONE is a scientific shit-heap. No intelligent person seriously considers anything that is published there.
Mod parent up. I wish we could count on our respective parties to uphold some core values. I don't vote for Democrats because I expect some return in the form of liberalization of government or society. Disappointment after disappointment has taught me not to do that. I vote for Democrats because I don't want more Scalias and Thomases deciding what the Constitution really means, and because I don't want the Bushes and Palins and Ryans and Romneys of the world pushing their crazy world views on us all.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
If conservatives are risk averse, why are a strong majority of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs conservative? Please don't say it's because greed and the desire to keep their money overpowers their inherent timidity at the world. That would be incredibly smug.
If liberals love uncertainly and novelty, why are they the ones who push for the certainty and banality of pervasive welfare programs? Please don't say it's because their inherent love of "people" overpowers their personal inclination for uncertainty. That would be incredibly patronizing.
Right : more economic freedom
Well...Maybe, if you happen to be a corporation.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
You seem to be confusing libertarianism with standard republicanism. Libertarians believe in individual freedom and choice, which includes both the freedom to go out there and do well for yourself and also the freedom to choose a more social life instead of joining the rat race.
It's a pure right-wing stance that those who lack interest in the rat race deserve to end up on the scrap heap. You seem to share that belief, so you're not a libertarian at heart at all.
Yes, of course it did.
How could you have different thoughts without different physical events happening in your brain?
Any change in behavior or cognition is accompanied by a change in the brain.
If I had to guess, you're probably just reacting to negative experiences. I find many self-ascribed "liberals" and "conservatives" aren't consistently liberal or conservative in their mindset, but are just adamantly anti-conservative or anti-liberal based on caricatures and stereotypes formed either through peer groups or personal experience. These are the people who find it easy to bring up the perceived wrongs committed by the other side, but will have a lot of trouble explaining their own positions without strings of platitudes and the fallacy of begging the question.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
From the article Not by Twins Alone: Using the Extended Family Design to Investigate Genetic Influence on Political Beliefs
Variance components estimates of political and social attitudes suggest a substantial level of genetic influence, but the results have been challenged because they rely on data from twins only. In this analysis, we include responses from parents and nontwin full siblings of twins, account for measurement error by using a panel design, and estimate genetic and environmental variance by maximum-likelihood structural equation modeling. By doing so, we address the central concerns of critics, including that the twin-only design offers no verification of either the equal environments or random mating assumptions. Moving beyond the twin-only design leads to the conclusion that for most political and social attitudes, genetic influences account for an even greater proportion of individual differences than reported by studies using more limited data and more elementary estimation techniques. These findings make it increasingly difficult to deny that—however indirectly—genetics plays a role in the formation of political and social attitudes.
The article can be found here.
This is complex indeed.
If I read the article correctly, the differences can be summed up thus:
Conservatives fear change - which leads to thinking that the current state of affairs is the best possible one and should never change
Liberals fear conflict - which leads to pandering and decisions by committee or focus-group that try to please everyone
Both groups need to recognize that we are actually capable of acting in a way that is contrary to our biological biases in the same way as we are able to resist these urges in the same way as we are able to resist going to the toilet until we reach a commode.
Real political philosophy is not a one-dimensional "right" or "left". I know it is hard for some people to grasp, but you can't describe everything political on that stupid scale.
If Liberals take more risks, shouldn't Wall Street be teeming with Democrats? To be fair, I have no data to disprove that hypothesis, only a really strong gut feeling that I'll find a few Mitt Romney fans in finance. Maybe that instinct to reject the article is my hard-wired conservativism.
... since americans are among the most uninformed electorates on the planet today. The average american, and average slashdot poster is CLUELESS about politics.
The reality is america is totally hard right, obama would have been not long ago a moderate republican (which is hard right the rest of the world). So you have a bunch of clueless americans who are voting between basically what amounts to the same flavor of hard right ideology with little difference. Many americans then make a big stink about their uninformed political views and opinions.
Reality is the average american is too ignorant/stupid to have any kind of informed political view of america given the huge amount of propaganda that pervades their media and education system.
Science, in studies like this, manages to forget science. Science is finding what is wrong with your idea.
These folks (and all people who practice epidemiology irrationally, which is most) get lost in death and forget life.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
Since being wrong (being conservative) is hard codded into the brain the only solution is to kill all the conservatives. This will eliminate all the faggotry in the universe and allow us awesome liberals (we know we are awesome because we tell ourselves so) to thrive and create a society where justice and liberalism rises expoentially with time. The only thing holding us back is conservatives. I hereby demand that we create a system of gas chambers to to kill the conservatives, and eliminate their false ideaology from the universe.
- Remember that the conservative faggots are responsible for gun violence, pedophilia, homophobia, brain and lung cancer, aids, and Glen Beck.
please help me, is there anything that would help me, I have a problem with my website .. please help http://newlifeimage.com/
conservatives want you to take individual risk, but tell you exactly what you can and cant do
Incorrect. Conservatives are for individual risk, and ALSO states rights which are inherently letting people do what they want to do.
liberals on the other hand want you to live your live as free as possible
HA HA HA HA HO HE HO HA HA HA HO HE
Oh yeah, that's why they like regulation so much, because it grants you so much "freedom" - freedom from being able to choose anything but a "safe" path the government agrees is best for you.
No, liberals are the party of Control - always have been, always will be.
Until you figure that out you'll keep voting in people you think are making you more free while they turn the screws tighter each year.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, this science is good.
We should kill all the people that don't believe in the same thing as we do...before birth.
This will make everything easier, and government will run smoother.
... seems to be wired for big-endian.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You clearly wouldn't know "extreme left" if it bit you in the butt. What passes for "left" in the USA is the extreme right most everywhere else.
For instance, the Dutch VVD is the closest we get to you democrats, they are a RIGHT wing party. Left wing is the SP and they are socialists. Real socialists. In France there still are communist parties AND they have quite recently been part of governments (Miterand, I think was the last).
The Republicans are in EU terms, extreme right and with that I mean one step away from goose stepping.
A thing to remember is that for instance the French LOVE big government, to them it means the system is working. Which it more or less is. The Germans KNOW what to much freedom can lead to, they know that some censorship is a price to pay for being the most evil country on the face of the earth, starting WW3 would not be appreciated by the world and so they ban certain books and parties. And it works so well that when they copied from the BBC the idea of Germany's greatest German they were so not worried about their citizens they excluded Hitler from the nominees... who could ONLY be included in the first place because they allowed Austrians in the list of greatest Germans... some people never learn.
The US was founded by people who LEFT the rest of the world because they didn't agree with the local systems. The rest of the world is populated by those who didn't find the local system objectionable enough to leave. This is a major issue with migration, it is rarely an entire balanced population that moves but rather a subset of a "normal" balanced population.
A clear example of this is/was Australia. They got more men then women because more men then women emigrated to find their fortune. Could it be that if a migration stream mostly consisted of say puritans fleeing from a country where they were not free to prosecute would influence they new home land and make it different from their old land because the "rest" is missing?
Mind you, that could lead to some nasty thoughts... what happens to a group of people who were picked for their properties as slaves... what if the only people to migrate are the poor who couldn't make a success in their old country? A population build up of fortune seekers?
Nasty... but if you are willing to entertain the thought that migration populations are subsets of a "normal" population, then some issues can be explained quite easily (why the US is so puritan and gun loving for instance.)
Mind you, a co-worker from Chili was forced to go through a course teaching him about Holland... in the book it told him that in Holland family is not as important as in other countries... right... I know several people who live in the same street as their parents and their grandparents are only a few minutes away. My co-workers LEFT his family on another CONTINENT and in 4 years had visited them ONCE!
To who does family then matter more? THINK before you answer. In CHILI family might matter more BUT not to THIS particular Chilian person who didn't MIND not seeing his family for years!
An emigrant/immigrants is a SPECIAL person DIFFERENT from all others in his home land because he LEFT IT BEHIND!
The US is made out of emigrants and slaves and tiny amount of natives. The EU is made of natives and a tiny amount of immigrants (really right wingers, it is less then 5% and that is counting everyone whose grandfather wasn't born in the same EU country).
It explains a lot, if you are willing to think.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
roflmao.
Classification error to identify lefties as 'liberals'. My hypothesis has always been that lefties are 'anti-authority', probably because they resented their father. In Russia, lefties hated the Tsar, now the same kind hate the Communists, or whoever else is in power. Similar everywhere.
Ask then answer: what changes when a Western regime changes, from Democrat to Republican and from Labour to Coalition? NOTHING. Nothing changes, the fraud, murder and corruption, the kiddie fiddling and forced adoption carries on regardless, because of a simple truth: the same people are in charge. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are two sides of the same fence, as are Milliband, Cameron and Clegg. They are puppets, being played to distract the rest of us from what is really going on: those in control of the fraud money are taking our possessions and more importantly our CHILDREN for their own and treating us like the slaves we all are. The puppet masters operate behind dark velvetine curtains, secret and unknown to the rest of us, and they're slowly realising that one day soon those curtains will be drawn back and they will be exposed for all to see.
The Romans had a name for this tactic of conquest: it was called "Divide and Conquer". Get this left-v-right crap out of your heads and start to realise that you're all being played.
conservatives have been throwing their stalwarts ..under the bus for not being suitably uncompromising about their core ideologies.
One is not a stalwart if they don't believe in your organizations' CORE values.
"The Germans KNOW what to much freedom can lead to"
I've read a lot of stupid things on SlashDot.
This is down there with the stupidest.
and studies showed conservative right based people are less intelligent.....just saying .....ya know LIKE most of the usa...and before you get all crazy on this comment , look at your ranking world wide for math it used to be 32nd now its 37th....your getting more stupid each day .....
Exactly. That's the problem with this idiotic article. The "right" vs. "left" distinction applies mainly to the US and its inbred two-nearly-identical-party system, ignoring the vast scope of diverse political thought that mankind has come up with over the last couple of thousand years (cf. the parent post). It's infantile, lacking all nuance and subtlety.
Whenever I hear about physiological differences in brains of two social groups I can't help but think of slavery, Fascism, Aryan race and so on... And, there is no clear line of division between "Lefties and Righties" as the summary suggests - people are usually liberal in some areas and conservative in others. It's the balance and the moral sacrifice that makes them support one party or another. They are essentially being filed under a "Leftie" or a "Rightie" label by the current political system which forces you to choose one option or the other. The best indicators of this actually happening are the elections - people change their mind which party to support based on current affairs and what values they think are more important to them - If I value the freedom of speech the most, I'd choose the Democrats as the Republican media are monopolised by media magnates, but if I value the freedom of self-determination even more I'd be more inclined to support the Republicans as Democrats usually introduce greater level of government control. Granted there are a lot of people who are hard-liners, but even they have different breaking points in terms of support for their chosen political option - hard-line conservatives wouldn't support a Fascist government, but a right-wing extremist would, even though they both strongly support Republican government. Same for the left-wing politics.
Being leftie or rightie is a matter of class, which is more complex than rich and poor.
You are likely in the same class as your parents and you children will most likely be in the same class as you.
The results are highly doubtable. First, political left or right, or alternatively, liberal or conservative are very imprecise categories and not universal across countries. In political science, the opposite of liberal (with no restrictions) is totalitarian. While economic models may range between community/state driven to private/company driven or planed and market economy.
In eastern Europe lefts are conservatives in the meaning of they are against change and want to keep their power. Right wing people are totalitarian and want to keep the power too. No side is liberal.
What they found out (again) people who can cope better with change tend to fear change less.
Okay, so how does that explain why Conservatives are less risk averse, and more willing to support things, like no-fault insurance, jettisoning guaranteed government programs (including social security, medicare/medicaid) for market solutions, and so on? Put that on a ballot anywhere, and you'll see Liberals howling about people being thrown to the wolves, while Conservatives will try and make a pitch that while risky, it would be more rewarding. In fact, the only thing that Conservatives are conservative about are social issues, and that too is in fact not there - if one looks at the divorce rates and out of wedlock births even in Conservative families. Like Bristol Palin, anyone?
Yes. The "hard coded" part in this summary is bullshit, especially when the summary itself says this:
"In research performed over 10 years ago, brain scans showed that London cab drivers' gray matter grew larger to help them store a mental map of the city."
Your brain rewires itself every day. It's how brains work.
I am outside the US and have never felt that I understood 100 percent what Americans mean when they say "liberal" or "conservative". They are obviously very emotionally charged words and half the time are misused as abuse words equating to" the group or type of people I don't like." Google is no assistance because too much noise from genuine political-party definitions of those words.
$125 per year per corporation in my state. If you can't write/think worth a damn, you can modify someone else's corporate charter to suit your own needs. Corporations are easy.
Novelty-seeking is more useful in social situations, while threat-awareness is more useful when you don't trust social situations and believe the underlying sociological dynamics will be more determinative.
Futurist Traditionalism
You're either out for the individual (and Selfish) or out for the herd/pack/tribe (and Social).
Misleading title! I thought you were going to talk about left and right as in relative positions.
If you read the artcile (yeah, I know few slashdotters bother to RTFA) did you notice that you did not need to pay for it, regardless of where you were? Did you notice you are free to download it and redistribute it any way you like?
PLoS (and others now, as well) is providing open access publishing. Work is still peer reviewed but nothing is held behind a paywall.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Because we're ALL left or right? What a bunch of horseshit. It's this sort of black and white thinking, and now "science" that keeps us from making any progress. If there's one thing the last 100 years have taught us about politics, it's that both the left and the right are completely full of shit. Organized stupidity is not the way to get things done.
They are if they remained consistent and the party changed around them.
I'm leftwing, left handed, left footed, left eyed, left penised and have migraines on the RIGHT side of my head. So I guess I am hard wired in everything.
This journal should try to answer that question first before making silly correlations between party affiliation and personality traits.
Left and Right, Liberals and Conservatists, was originally a distinction that made sense at the beginning of democracy: do we try to keep a system similar to what was before (conservatists) or do we try for something new and different (liberals).
Obviously, you don't want to ever keep trying for something new and different. All you end up with if you do that is change for the sake of change, instability, and needlessly complicated laws piled on top of each other. In current times, it is actually the right wing that enacts the most new laws, which is quite opposed to what you'd expect since they're therefore the ones doing change. Oh, there certainly are some real evolutions wanted by the lefties, such as legislating marijuana, which probably should have happened decades ago but hasn't due to ill-placed conservatist convictions, but it's mostly a small mediatic issue with little relevance in the grand scheme of things.
So what is the difference between left and right, really? You could say it's that right wing governments want to minimize government spending and taxation, while left wing wants to use taxpayer money to provide a baseline of quality to a variety of services (health, pension, transport, telecommunications...). A savvy person would think the first approach is best as governments are not able to efficiently run services, while it is good to have a minimum service for the latter. Yet in the past decades government spending has always been highest with right wing governments.
There are actually many issues where you'll find that the distinction is not clearly cut or has varied considerably among history.
In the end, Left or Right, it doesn't mean anything other than who's sponsoring you.
I think the research passes the smell test. It makes sense that two groups of people that can look at the same topic and have wildly differing opinions probably have some structural difference in the organ that creates those opinions. If you look past the "conservatives are pussies, liberals are daredevils" flamebait, there are a lot of interesting questions like how do those structures form and change? Perhaps those questions can be answered by reading the article? Hopefully some other readers out there are also interested in the science. Unfortunately after a quick scan through the comments I didn't see any neuroscience or biology types chiming in. Just right vs left vs not left enough.
The linear left right is too simplistic. A better but more complex description would not just ask what someones position is on an issue but at what level (individual, family, voluntary group, neighborhood, town, county, state, national, world) a binding agreement should be made and enforced on that issue. A person can be personally conservative (traditional morality) and yet have a live and let live attitude. A person can also claim to be liberal and yet want to force everyone to do as they say.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Is responsible for being succeptible to classifying things using oversensationalized false dichotomy?
What part is responsible for implying causation based on correlation?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Wherever determinism appears, controversy attends, raising spectres of days when colonialists, eugenicists, public health officials, and political idealists believed they could cure the human condition through manipulation and force."....oh, wait. Wrong tense, anyway.
This is probably correct. I went from Republican, to Libertarian, to anarchist, over about 8 years. It's not that my views changed all that much (they did change a little), but mostly I just realized that not only were Republicans not the party of freedom, but that there was no party of freedom, or rather, that freedom doesn't come from government. My core desire (to be allowed to act according to my own reason) remained the same.
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Yes, someone saw it!
Plasticity! No it's not plastic but the ability to modify. I think what the author,OP is trying to say is that the left and right hemispheres are "evolutionized" to handle certain aspects on the left (mundane) and right (creative). Does this mean that being Liberal frees up your right-hemisphere for more intelligence and creativity. Most of the cerebral matter controlling parts of your body are on the opposite side of the part it is controlling. Hypothetically, possible blood flow issue as when one side is strained the muscles tend to transfer part of that energy all the way up (jaw clenched attempting to pull the door free of it's hinges). Besides all the flamebait I read on this article, it does make some sense. Now you can't say conservatives as pussies or cats as cats are independent. They are more like dogs that follow a lead dog. This trait to may be rewired but it may be that it's built along the hardwired part that makes it hard to change. Many traits like religious beliefs, gang or group affiliation are hard to change. These actions all fall into the same realm of forced choice or upbringing. It can be done, but it takes stronger influence.
"We are all just a few neurons short of being crazy, one good short circuit in the purkinje clusters and you are toast"
It Eugenics again. I think the Nazi's tried making this "science" work for them too.
Read your history children, nothing new here, just same old BS.
What this doesn't answer is whether these differences are primarily genetic or environmental. My family and I have rather different political philosophies (to the point that Thanksgiving dinners are getting increasingly aggravating for me), and I wonder whether I'm a mutant, or is it because I've had such different life experiences from them? I am pretty risk-averse for a "liberal" (under this model), so maybe I've just been through enough examples of conservatism being proved wrong (or at least wrong-hearted) to make me an outlier.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Is this research done by Conservatives or Liberals? I need to know before I praise it or trash it!
I wish the bias weren't so obvious in the post. They might as well have said that all conservatives are actually apes and that liberals are so advanced because they are willing to throw away anything old for something new and shiny. New equals better, always, and therefore opposition of a new bill rightly makes one a monkey. There are a great many things that are replaceable and worth looking at in regards to reform; there are other things still which don't need to be tampered with because they work. It has everything to do with our definitions of broken. Perhaps opposition can bring about some good, and having either party run unchecked would probably be disastrous. We should know this by now. Liberal doesn't equal good any more than Conservative equals bad. On the contrary, they are both beginning to mean very little of worth in my mind.
All firearms sales from a registered FFL (licensed firearms dealer) MUST pass a background check, whether at a gun show or not. This is federal law. The "gun show loophole" is a myth. If you're a non-dealer you may sell your privately owned firearm to another person and private citizens are not required to do the background check. But that has nothing to do with gun shows. TMYK.
Am i the only one that feels "Hard-Coded" should be the word in quotes, not Left and Right.
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Look, I know it's hard enough to get editors that perform basic functions like "make sure the link isn't just blog or product pimping" or "make sure that article hasn't been posted already", so asking them to actually PARSE the text and edit it is expecting a lot....but really, could you slant the language in the summary more?
"From the article: "Other scans have shown that brain regions associated with risk and uncertainty, such as the fear-processing amygdala, differ in structure in liberals and conservatives. And different architecture means different behavior. Liberals tend to seek out novelty and uncertainty, while conservatives exhibit strong changes in attitude to threatening situations. The former are more willing to accept risk, while the latter tends to have more intense physical reactions to threatening stimuli.""
So when liberals do it, its 'novelty, uncertainty' or 'risk'.
When conservatives do it, it's 'threatening'.
No, no editorial bias there.
Would it read differently if we reversed the words used, and said that liberals seek out 'threatening' situations and conservatives avoid risk and uncertainty? Meaning (roughly) the same, but it kinda makes liberals look rather stupid in turn.
Further, from the article: "The researchers found that liberals and conservatives donâ(TM)t differ in the risks they do or donâ(TM)t take" and âoeIf you went to Vegas, you wonâ(TM)t be able to tell whoâ(TM)s a Democrat or whoâ(TM)s a Republican". The summary says that they react very differently (when in fact, the article only says their brains 'light up' differently), but their actual behavior is indistinguishable.
Finally, the conclusion of the article says it quite clearly that the dynamic nature of the brain constantly reconfiguring itself means that we really cannot assert that anything is hard-coded...in DIRECT opposition to the summary header.
The actual studies are fascinating, shitty /. summary notwithstanding, for a couple of reasons:
1) to me it seems obvious, that the articles have the cause/effect reversed as well. It's not that our politics set our brain patterns; our brain patterns no doubt are expressed in our worldview/politics.
2) it's even more curious that the differences in response are NOT reflected in behavior - that's absolutely bizarre.
-Styopa
Left and right are not the only options. http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz
Left : more personal freedom, less economic freedom. Right : more economic freedom, less personal freedom.
The left right spectrum is a poor way to judge these things, personal freedoms like guns, who they can hire (discrimination laws, closed shop laws), and what schools public money can be used for (charter schools), are all personal freedoms that most conservatives believe in. The two big freedoms that many conservatives oppose is abortion, they believe the baby's right to live supersedes the mother's right to choose, and gay marriage, which they believe is a religious sacrament, I personally believe that the government should not treat people any different married or not and should not be performing religious sacraments.
Most of these contradictions are due to pandering, so a simple political spectrum line no where near defines conservative and liberal, there is no universal definition.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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A person can also claim to be liberal and yet want to force everyone to do as they say.
A person can claim to be a fish but it doesn't give them gills. If you want to control people's personal lives, you're not a liberal. If you want to control business, you're not a conservative. Left, right, that's national. Our left is many nations' right, maybe most. But we have a far left and a left of left, too. We're not going to institute their policies if we can't even institute those of the left, at least, those which are actually leftist.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't think so. I was liberal when I was younger, as I got older, I got more conservative - seeing through the liberal BS. There are many people with the same story.
It's called flip-flopping. Did you change girlfriends and thus political leanings?
This left vs right is such a load of artificial horse shit. It's an artificial debate created to give the illusion of having a lively discussion, where really the end agenda of the Dempublicans and Republicrats is basically the same - corporate interests.
Each idea and concept should be looked at with its own merit, in a holistic way. Start by examining others who have attempted the same thing, and learn from their mistakes. After which, when we have an understanding of the pros and cons, a decision forward should be made.
In some cases, this is a public service. Roads are hard to make a specific business case for, but they sure grease the wheels of an economy! People need innovative computer technology? Probably a bad idea to try and get government employees to do that one.
Is this government service not living up to its promise? Why not? Can we make the process more efficient? What about if this part of the process is outsourced? Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Is company 'T' providing an essential service, but charging more than they should for it? With crappy service, that's hurting the economy at large? Let's tighten up regulations, and see if there's a place for the public to strategically chip in.
As long as decisions are made in the best interests OF THE PEOPLE, 'left vs right' is irrelevant. It's whether decisions are made and policies are implemented in the interests of the people that's the important part, and those decisions can be made in either public or private places.
Extremists are stupid.
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So much depends on the questions, how they are phrased, what topics. A selection of typical politically charged questions infused with specific wording and phrasing can easily make for a desired outcome.
Oh, let's ask questions about fear on a political spectrum.
"Do you trust the government?"
"Are you concerned the government is over-stepping it's bounds?"
"Do you fear the U.S. government becoming a tyrannical state."
"Do you fear politicians taking away your rights?"
Wow...conservatives answered yes, liberals no. Clearly, conservatives are fearful.
STOP
"Do you fear being stopped by a police officer?"
"Do you fear politicians taking away your freedom of choice?"
"Do you fear the influence of religion in politics."
Wait, the liberals answer yes, and conservatives answered no. Clearly the liberals are full of fear.
Seriously, without a clear insight into their questions. And the specific wording. It is hard to give this study much more credence than a piece of toast with butter on it.
How about, I no longer have any idea what left, right conservative, liberal, democrat, and republican mean anymore. What's defined by history and fact, or interpretation, and what society says one or the other are, can be and is often contradictory.
If you poled a 1000, or even 10,000 random people across the country and asked them to specifically define each, you'd get contradictions and incorrect responses for each definition. You would not have consistency across the board, and that makes use of terms, questionable from the outset.
When I'm asked about my political affiliation, I give a wry smile and say, it's all over the place. Because for me, it really boils down to every single issue and argument, with high specitivity.
If we're going to have a discussion about politics at the national to local level, perhaps we should actually HAVE an intellectual discussion and not limit our vocabulary to meaningless and contradictory terms.
And to some degree, amenable to reason. As he got older, my late father was a right-wingnut, Limbaugh listening crazy. While some of this was the dementia, even as a younger person, he had always been right-ish, and/or libertarian leaning. Both my sister and I, in contrast, are moderate, conservative on some issues, liberal on others, and open to changes based on facts, despite the best efforts of my father to have us join in on his fanaticism fun.
The difference is that we grew up reading a lot, went to college, and didn't grow up poor and feeling constantly under threat. Moreover, we weren't forced to go to a church (Despite this, my sister now attends regularly), or engage in team sports - the major sources of educational propaganda in the USA. It makes a difference.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Right, because changing your opinions means you're a brainwashed fool. Who does that!?
You'll often hear in such studies that conservatives operate from a place of fear.
That's not really a bad thing a lot of the time. Life is pretty dangerous. As the recent economic crises showed, big risk can become big problems.
And of course progressives seek novelty and uncertainly. That's also not really bad thing a lot of the time. You can discover new things. Sometimes the 'bad things' don't out to be as bad...
There's also the MBTI scale (INTP, INFJ, INTJ...) classification as well.
A lot of it might even be good from an evolutionary perspective... kind of like epi-genetics. If you gave birth to your child during a famine, then your child will actually be genetically tuned to store more fat... taking into account the famine.
Who knows how this all plays in with politics. If you were raised in disorder, maybe you crave authority or something... I don't know. Just guessing
They're all useful mode of thinking.
And yes, they don't all match directly to political movements.
When it comes to the environment, liberals/progressives seem to operate like a conservative... and conservatives operate like progressives.
I think this is a good example of how research shows what the researcher intended it to show beforehand.
If you know a few things about a person, you can predict their political orientation with great success.
Things like:
-their capacity (or lack of) for empathy (many people are structurally incapable of empathy)
-how they generally view in-group authority (trustworthy or corrupt)
-their bias toward safety and tradition or novelty and exploration
Check out how successful these studies were in predicting political orientation:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
I was a hard-core conservative a few years ago, now I'm a hard-core liberal.
Did my brain rewire itself?
If you're anything like me, it was just a little bit of logic that finally went through your head. I was a card-carrying Libertarian until I really thought about the goals I would set for society. For instance, socialized medicine sounds restrictive, but the result is that for most people it means greater economic freedom, not less. How? Because if you are not forced to worry about health care coverage when switching between jobs or starting your own business, you are much more able to do so. Similarly, if you tax the rich heavily and require employers to provide a living wage, you have a healthy middle class and a flowing economy where more people are more free to pursue their goals. Conservatives might talk about "freedom" a lot, but it's only a theoretical freedom -- without the means to pursue your goals, the "freedom" to do so is meaningless.
I guess I agree with some of the findings. But why is it then that when the environment is getting fucked over, supposedly only the liberals care?
I think the real difference at least in the US is that so-called far right conservatives often base decisions on how much it helps the wealthy and fuck all else. Extreme far right-ism seems to be the popular or influencing opinion as of the last 5 years, so I think that is the issue.
Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle... I care about the environment a lot, I don't really think the rich should get richer while the poor get poorer. But at the same time I don't think handouts are a great answer, nor do I think we can ignore the economy and survive.
There is a relatively scientific and objective description of a fish. Not so with the liberal and conservative labels. How many times do you read he/she isn't a real liberal/conservative?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
, the conservatives have been throwing their stalwarts (Arlen Spector, John McCain, and now Chuck Hagel, et al)
Stalwart, not how I would describe a former Democrat, the guy everybody in Washington would go to for a quote from a Republican to bad mouth other Republicans, and the dude who lost his shit about the surge, and doesn't have the courage to admit he lost his shit. +5 insightful, I think not.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Our HEARTS are bleeding!
Exactly. That's the problem with this idiotic article. The "right" vs. "left" distinction applies mainly to the US and its inbred two-nearly-identical-party system
No, it refers to the seating in the Estates General early in the French Revolution, a pattern that became obsolete within months even there. Edmund Burke would have been as appalled by the Nazis (conservative in practice if socialistic in rhetoric before it achieved power) as he was by the French Revolution, to pick one conservative icon.
Jerry Pournelle got his PolySci PhD with a dissertation that pointed this out and proposed a two dimensional system of statist/individualist and rationalist/nonrationalist axes. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand makes any system advocating capitalism nonrationalist (except for Ayn Rand's) since the idea is that capitalism's superior results are an emergent behavior of economic systems, as opposed to Communism's rationalistic certainty of the model of Economic Determinism, which in practice fails for anything larger than an extended family or hunter-gatherer band. I am certain that more axes could be defined (most Libertarians that I know will fall away once drug legalization occurs, especially if pot is taxed like cigarettes, so that could be an axis, for example).
Is that liberals are upset that people like you are scared of everything and, rather than let you inflict your fear on everyone else, they call you out on your ignorance and fear, making you even more scared.
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I played Dungeons and Dragons back before it was cool.
When was that? And where -- I noticed that it was common among Army and private school veterans years before I first even heard of it (that is, once I heard of it, I examined the histories of the long-time players).
Who was smarter than any of these posers said, "If you aren't a Liberal by the time you're twenty you have no heart. If you aren't a Conservative by the time you're forty, you have no head"
I believe in Winston Churchill, not some boneheaded wannabe.
This kind of statement drives me crazy. Do you really think that the fact that people were allowed to SAY those things caused the holocaust and thus freedom somehow caused the holocaust? The problem, from what I've read, was that the general public in Germany at the time was on board with blaming their problems on the Jews, confiscating their property, placing specific restrictions on them, etc.
A common misconception is that freedom means "I can do whatever I want". That's anarchy, not freedom. Real freedom means being able to do pretty much what you want *as long as you aren't hurting or interfering with anyone else*. That last part is very important. Pre-war germany may have been a very free place for anti-semites but it wasn't a free place for Jews. If they had actually had protections for everyone then it wouldn't have made any difference how much some people spouted off about the Jews. Not that I think that people screaming hatred is a good thing (and you could certainly make the argument that this is a form of harm) but the question that matters is why people didn't reject that crap outright instead of getting on board with it.
Twenty years ago I was extremely conservative. Now I'm much more moderate, and would even be considered liberal on some issues. Did my brain physically change? I'm skeptical.
Proverbs 21:19
Ever since WW2 (even before, if you are prepared to acknowledge the existence of Wilhelm Reich) psychologists have taken an interest in politics. I've found these sources to be particularly enlightening:
Eysenck ('this country' refers to the UK)
Altemeyer (PDF)
Most Americans, in my view, have been deliberately confused by their authoritarians calling themselves 'social conservatives' and talking as if 'liberal' was the opposite of 'conservative', whereas it is really the opposite of 'authoritarian' and orthogonal to 'conservative' (whose opposite is 'radical').
I don't see how universal background checks are at the expense of freedoms anymore than a driver's license, fishing license, hunting license etc is.
I was going to use some of my mod points in this topic, but I can't let this go unanswered. There are many problems with "universal background checks", but the main thing I want to say is that none of those licenses require a background check, which is a far more intrusive procedure. AFAIK, nobody gets denied a driver's license because they once got busted for smoking pot. I'm surprised that you can't see the difference between a license, even a license with a test, and a background check.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
There are safety features in transmission systems used since the 1950s that were not present. In many countries they are required by law but in the USA exceptions are made for the older electricity distribution companies and self regulation is expected but of course doesn't really happen and you get whatever third world quality shit can be gotten away with - libertarianism at work.
Does that clear up your mistake where you are going on about house wiring? Please go to the effort of understanding what has been written before accusing the writer of ignorance.
Spector / McCain / Hagel are as much conservative stalwarts as Joe Lieberman was a liberal stalwart. How well was he treated by his own party not being suitably uncompromising?
In a meritocracy, you don't have entrenched elites because somebody better can come along and either usurp them, replace them, or uproot them entirely. Our PC revolution is a case in point. Computers were first IBM, then Apple, then Microsoft, and now cell phones. Whatever's best wins. Yes, that rutheless approach to the economy has its social ill effects, as we say "oh jeez, the idiot that invested in that startup should now have nearly the limitless power over all of society because he or she picked the right cell phone stock". To a certain extent, the great debates over left vs right have to do with society's powers being vested in a constantly churning entrepreneurial and investment class versus a more fixed academic class, the former claiming objectivity through test in the markets as a mark of better human understanding, and the latter, testing through selection of peers through rigorous examination. Both though, think they have the best process for determining what is merit, and what neither get, is what to do with society when you have an increasing population that doesn't give a damn about either, either because they can't win under either set of rules, or they just don't give a damn.
This is my sig.
I'm generally pro-gun but there are some items on both sides that I find absolutely ridiculous when it comes to debating guns:
a) The 2nd Amendment / Constitutional Miscast -
The 2nd amendment has to be taken in conjunction with Section 8 of the Constitution itself. The intent, and the mythology of the American revolution was that an armed citizenry rose up and overthrew the mighty British Empire by pioneering guerilla warfare and turning America into a pro-VietNam or Iraq. The fact is, it was a regular, professional army, that did much of the job. But, be that as it may, the idea of turning America into an uber viet nam in case we are invaded could certainly work in this day and age, and so to that end, it follows, in the minds of the framers, that yes, we, the people, all of us, are the militia, and yes, we are all by the 2nd amendment allowed to have not just guns, but military style rifles if we are to judge the intent of the militia by the standard of the day. So on that point, liberals are dead wrong. But, on the flipside of the coin, having an armed citizenry also meant that there would be no standing army at all. No bases overseas. No invasions of sovereign nations. So, for both sides of the aisle, if we were going to be constitutional, we'd -eliminate- the standing army, let states control the tanks and heavy stuff, and then, the citizenry would be armed to deal with invaders. Liberals and Conservatives are both right, for pieces of the argument, but both lie as well.
b) The It's Not Fully Automatic Strawman
Has anyone who has ever made this argument every really tried to shoot an assault rifle on full auto - if they had one? Bottom line is, full auto fricking sucks. The barrel climbs, you waste rounds. You have to change magazines more often and you aren't as effective. So saying today's semi-auto assault rifles aren't as good as their military counterparts is a bit of a strawman - fully auto for a rifle in a 30 round mag simply isn't as good for many defensive purposes, except for suppression of enemy fire, and for that, chances are, that's probably not as good as a belt fed minigun or a .50 cal.
c) The gun deaths vs violent crime statistic
Gun control advocates like to show lower gun deaths in gun control countries. But violent crime rates also tend to soar in gun control countries. Home invasions, beatings, etc. The advantage is that, to the left, less people get killed is probably better than more people getting robbed or rate. Conservatives would be tempted to disagree, but their own stance on rape and abortion is so ridiculous ...
d) The "mentally ill" red herring.
The vast majority of gun deaths are not caused by some crazy guy going postal. For the most part, gun deaths are usually caused by a guy whose poor, in a relationship breakup, and is looking at child support, losing his kids, and what not, and he flips his shit. Or, he's in a gang fighting over turf. Most of the time, drugs or alcohol are involved. Screening for mental illness, saying say that, bipolar people should not have guns, isn't going to make a statistical dent in anything. There's no reliable test that can say "hey, are you going to gun down a movie theater".
e) The "we can actually ban them" argument.
The USA cannot even ban fricking illegal drugs. If people want them, people will get them. You only need to buy a gun once, and then hide it. Heck, they are easy enough to make.
This is my sig.
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There is a problem with what we call left and right: it may denote in fact two lefts and two rights.
This seems to carry a contradiction. A libertarian would want to limit the intrusion of the state in its life. However, a socialist knows that the law, that is the state, is the only way to limit the power of the capitalists and promote equality among citizen.
This is the contradiction between liberty and equality. Pushing liberty too far leads to ultraliberalism, where the wealthier rules. Pushing equality too far leads to an oppresive state. French stateman Maximilien Robespierre added brotherhood to liberty and equality in order to balance them, creating France motto that is still currently in use: Liberté, égalité, fraternité
Problem with "freedom" is that one person's freedom is the other person's lack of freedom.
The (economic) "freedom" of a company to expand and take out the competition, thus becoming a monopoly, steps on the (personal) freedom of consumers, who now lack choice. However, monopolies are also bad for other companies, so it also steps on their (economic) freedom.
So neither left,right or liberal should endorse monopolies, as it results in less overall freedom.
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...You did not. In fact, all you had was essentially a denial followed by a halfhearted "because you're a conservative drone!" And you got modded +5?
I'm a liberal but you're just as bad as Faux News. So is whoever modded you.
An old study on London (crabby) cab drivers tells us about differences between lest and right? This is what I call hard(on) research. Guess what scans of the researchers biases will show!
For some people, it is monkey see, monkey do. Their friends convince each other to vote one way, and then that individual votes the same way, for fear of making a mistake. Who wants to vote for the losing candidate? It is a kind of mob mentality.
But when I look at my personal practices, I vote, not for the party, but for the candidate who will best represent my community. I have switched several times in my life.
And no, I am not ambidextrous handed or ambidextrous in voting because I don't care. I usually choose the more proactive candidate, because I know s/he will do a better job.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
This is suspect. People's party affiliations change depending on their life situations, not to mention the definition of 'conservative' and 'liberal' changes significantly about every 20 years. In the last election, Democrats were quoting Reagan more than the Republicans. For me, I consider it a conservative view that health care is a basic human right, and that its unethical to make a sick person pay to get healthy. The Declaration of Independence speaks of "inalienable rights" being "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," you can't do any of that without a few trips to the doctor or hospital in your life.
I now consider both old-firm parties irrelevant to anything I'd like to see in a nation.
Conservatism vs Liberalism? There are no such isms.
See if you can find the old movie, Mediocrity. It seem appropriate, although the last time I searched I couldn't find it. All references had been replaced with more modern "stuff" , short films, or artsy stuff. The right Mediocrity is about two people who end up being frozen and awaken in a world where the average IQ is today's equivalent of 20..
The "study" did not take impartial data, then construct a hypothesis. Instead, "evidence" was constructed to support a pre-determined conclusion.
No actual research was involved.
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It doesn't seem to follow that the political leanings of an individual are "hard-coded" from the premises of the research (low-level cognitive processes are correlated with political leanings, low-level cognitive processes are influenced by genetics). The article and discussion are treating the issue like your involuntary cognitive tendency determines your outlook. It seems equally likely that your cognitive tendencies (I'm referring to the amygdala/right-wing vs. insula/left-wing) are the result of environmental influences. Your cognitive tendencies could be shaped by the environment and then they result in the observable behavior of political associations. Genetic influence should be viewed in terms of predispositions towards behaviors and attitudes, rather than a wholly deterministic force. Thus the term "hard-coded" doesn't seem accurate because while a genetic predisposition may exist you can't rule out the effect of environment.
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